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.
So this is why they want that browser integrity stuff.
Without the integrity a change like this would be absolutely wonderful - my ad interests would be "FuckOff" and "Nothing".
Vivaldi had stripped out this crap, it's good that Chromium is FOSS, anybody can gut it to their like. Apart the Vivaldi History Page is way different from al other Chromium (Calendar view customizable in several formats, stadistics with graphs, not a simple list) since its first versions..
Vivaldi doesn’t collect your history data. All of this information is strictly private and local to your computer. What you get to see is the kind of data that could be tracked by third parties. Instead of trying to monetize it, we are giving you this data – for your eyes only. With the ability to analyze this information, you can decide if you want to adjust your online behavior or remove certain items from the list.
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.
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.
I might be wrong but as far as I understand Google's topics API only gives websites access to information like "here is a user who likes the topics IT and gardening", which is a LOT less than what is possible with cookies. With cookies a website can get information like "here is a user who visited your website yesterday and two times last week. Also they recently visited websites A, B and C, and frequently visits website D. On website D they are logged in as X." They make all your visits to a website and, with third-party cookies, also to other websites connectable. Google's topics do not.
The way I see it, that's just browser history exfiltration with extra steps. Whether they're sending the actual history or parsing your history and sending topics, both are equally as objectionable to me as both could reveal information about something private you've been visiting.