Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics [LWN.net]

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 26, 2022 22:07 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465)
Parent article: Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

> Apparently, the uproar over FLoC succeeded in diverting that particular plan, so Topics was born.

Excellent. Now let's kill Topics, and ideally leave enough of a smoking crater to discourage trying again.

to post comments

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 1:01 UTC (Thu) by developer122 (guest, #152928) [Link] (6 responses)

I foresee an endless series of dominoes ending with all of this happening *entirely* within the browser in secret, communicating with advertizers through a back-channel.

This is what happens when google owns not only the market but the actual *browser* through which the whole web is viewed. They have what every advertizer wishes for: a hold on the actual physical device.

We need a real and concerted effort to get people off of chrome onto literally anything else. Sympathetic websites running ads for other browsers to chrome users. Other software asking if you'd like to install chromium/firefox/whatever along with the product, like google toolbar in the good old days. People getting loves ones off of chrome and onto another browser. This needs to be war.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 1:04 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (5 responses)

If we're coordinating to get people off of Chrome, let's not treat Chromium as meaningfully different.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 22:16 UTC (Thu) by developer122 (guest, #152928) [Link] (4 responses)

It is meaningfully different. It's not shipped by google. The have no control over what ends up in the final product and cannot include anything in secret that the browser vendor cannot remove.

The only reason you're saying that is because it runs on a similar codebase which is nothing more than a technical detail. All the other browsers have defied google in not supporting third party cookies regardless of what engine they use to render HTML.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 29, 2022 18:15 UTC (Sat) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (3 responses)

Chromium is absolutely shipped by Google, from the same codebase with configuration options changed; it's just *compiled* by others, sometimes with a few additional configuration changes. Yes, it's Open Source and not hiding anything, but that doesn't mean it won't *openly* do things you'd rather it didn't, and those things aren't likely to change.

Also, Chromium still uses the same browser engine, and as a result, further encourages websites to only care about that same browser engine, which makes life harder for other browsers.

Chromium does not meaningfully diverge from browser design decisions made in Chrome; it may disable individual features (or support others compiling binaries with those features disabled), but won't make substantial direction changes that diverge from Chrome's.

If you very much like Chrome and just want it to be fully Open Source, then by all means run Chromium.

If you don't like Chrome's direction or choices, Chromium generally won't help you avoid them.

And if you want a multiple browsers to continue existing and thriving, try something not based on the same engine, like Firefox.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 29, 2022 18:19 UTC (Sat) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (2 responses)

Couldn't agree more. Also - both Chromium and Firefox are beasts to build. Various Linux distros are struggling to keep pace, especially where you have to build Rust toolchains or whatever in addition. The two browsers have enough code to be a mini OS in themselves and, sadly, upstream aren't always interested in building on architectures other than Intel/AMD/Android. Not a great situation to be in.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Feb 7, 2022 0:47 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

Things could be worse, we still have WebKit and I don't think that's going away any time soon. The only thing holding it back on Linux is that it's treated like a throwaway thing and nobody tries to build a serious browser on it.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Feb 7, 2022 4:38 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

I haven't used it, but the GNOME Web browser is based on WebKit.