Topics essentially works like this: rather than using cookies to track people around the web and figure out their interests from the sites they visit and the apps they use, websites can ask Chrome directly, via its Topics JavaScript API, what sort of things the user is interested in, and then display ads based on that. Chrome picks these topics of interest from studying the user’s browser history.
Isn’t this completely immoral? They are literally stealing the users private browsing history and uses it to boost their own profits.
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This is incorrect. A user who uses chrome but uses another search engine and blocks cookies and tracking scripts is not providing Google with information about what they are doing online.
With the topics api, Google reads your actual browsing history which is incredibly private information that they have no right to look at whatsoever.
I don’t know what world you are living in when you think Google wants to desperately stop third common cookies and other means of tracking - Google is an ad company!
The internet not wanting to pay for Google services sounds like a Google problem, not a problem for the users. Google doesn’t have some universal right to exist and be preditory to it’s users.
If they can’t sell their services, they should get off the internet instead of surviving by invading their users privacy and offering “free” services. Fuck Google.
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So what has to happen for the general population to move away from chrome/chromium?
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Edge is a chromium browser, too. It has been for some time now.
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To be fair, they immediately give the option to disable it.
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They’re not stealing browser history. The site requests a list of topics and Chrome parses them based on the local history and returns a list of topics.
It’s more secure and private than third party cookies.
The technique they use does not really change to the issue.
It’s also not necessarily more secure than third party cookies like you claim? You can refuse those cookies and not all website use them, while all website ends up in browsing history.
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Am all for this move if it makes Google drop third-party cookies tomorrow.
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They have been planning to drop 3rd party cookies since 2021 with a deadline for EOY 2023 being pushed to EOY 2024.
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