this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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Non-technical users are still likely to assume incognito mode gives them a greater degree of digital privacy from trackers purely from the fact that cookies aren't kept between sessions. For that same reason, Google has made false overtures about protecting user privacy by potentially deprecating third-party cookies when there are many tracking methods less well-known than cookies.
That's true, but Google has also been trying to introduce new non-tracking ways to have targeted advertising directed by your browser. The Topics API actually seemed like a really cool idea, but unfortunately it didn't get the take-up from other browsers or from websites that it would have needed to actually replace third-party cookies. They weren't "false overtures", they were sincere, but relied on the broader ecosystem picking up non-tracking alternatives like Topic (or working constructively to develop even better systems). Since that failed, Google's backed down and is allowing third-party cookies to remain indefinitely.