Google has stated it plans to address developers’ concerns by “making web publishers promise not to abuse the API”.
Google’s new browser-based tracking functionality available via their “Topics API” has sparked numerous concerns recently, including fear that the heightened communication of web browser history could lead to “fingerprinting attacks” which could be used to track users across devices by profiling recent web history.
When prompted with this issue, Google started their short-term solution is to have web developers who enroll in the new Topics API platform take pledge that they will not abuse the new tool, whatever that means.
So, working as designed.
Google is also about to force on Enhanced Safe Browsing which will report every URL you visit to them with no opt out.
It’s finally really time to change browsers.
Daily reminder that Firefox is customizable to the point of removing Mozilla’s telemetry and making it look and feel almost like Chromium. And no, de-Googled Chromium probably isn’t enough because preliminary code for implementing WEI has been pushed upstream (basically they added the code which makes it possible for WEI to be implemented, strongly suggesting they’re intending to actually implement it upstream and not in Chrome)
So degoogled chromium will have WEI? WTF! Deleting it now.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/
For what it’s worth, no Google Topics in Vivaldi.
Google made the internet usable and now they’re destroying it. Thanks Google?
…because pledges have always worked so well in the past.
Didn’t you hear them? They made them promise.
Pinky swear, even!
They’ve almost destroyed search.
Its like they want to just kill the internet altogether.
Sigh I remember when they weren’t evil.
Please stop using Chrome
Between that and the online DRM of Integrity API, it’s time everyone moves to Firefox.
I’ve never understood the logic of people who switched to Chrome from Firefox.
Mozilla has an overpaid CEO, so let’s switch to a browser that’s run by one of the richest companies on the planet. Firefox broke some extension, so let’s switch to a browser that has an even worse extension model. Firefox shows client side ads that are easily disabled, so let’s switch to a browser actually run by an ad tech company. Firefox changed the UI to look like Chrome (and they hate the design), so I guess switch to Chrome?
It makes no sense…
I suspect the list of people who switched to Chrome from Firefox, especially within the last decade, is vanishingly small.
In the early days of Chrome, it was svelt and lightweight compared to Opera or Firefox, but IE had the vast, vast, vast market share. Chrome handled tabs in a really cool way (the way ALL browsers now do it, putting them right in the application title bar in place of menus). The light touch and nice tabs made it worthwhile to switch at the time. And frankly, Blink was better than Gecko. But even then, the goal of all of the browser wars was to get people off of IE. IE didn’t respect web standards and made it flat-out hard to build websites. Switching someone to Chrome from IE was super easy so many people were encouraged to do so.
For most of its life, people were switching from IE (and Safari) to Chrome. Not Firefox to Chrome.
Nowadays, Chrome is just everywhere. People know it, and it still has a fairly-undeserved reputation as being better than the default browser (Edge/Safari).
So the reason this feels so illogical to you is because that scenario just… wasn’t happening.
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.
How could Google allow such blatant incompetence in their products?
Just like google promised to not be evil?
I mean it’s a tracker, after all… naming it “Privacy Sandbox” doesn’t change what it is. It’s as much use as a privacy tool as a wrench is for sewing.
Google is likely asking them to not abuse it just to cover its own arse, to create that plausible denial that the API was not “supposed” to be used for fingerprinting. It smells bullshit from a distance.
