Google drops FLoC, replaces it with Topics

After received massive backlash from the community and privacy experts across the world for its much ambitious plans to replace third-party cookies with "FLOC" Google has now come up with a new approach it calls “Topics” to phase out third-party cookies while maintaining privacy. Lets take a look at what Topics API is all about and what Google has done differently this time.

With Topics API the Chrome browser notes your top interests for that week based on your browsing history and registers them in the browser under broad categories like “music” or “sports”.

Google has broadly curated 300 such categories. Advertisers and publishers are able to access this data via a browser API, which is a feed of information that they can tap into.

Then when users visit a site that has signed up to the Topics API, three of the user’s “topics” of interest are shared with the site and its advertisers, allowing the site to serve ads that reflect the user’s interest in.

The system will allow users to see the topics, remove any they don’t like or disable the feature completely. The topics are deleted every three weeks.

Google will launch a developer trial of Topics in Chrome that would include user controls, and enable website developers and the ads industry to try it out.