Google Replaces FLoC with Topics API: What Changes for Privacy

After significant backlash from privacy advocates, Google announced it was killing off FLoC and replacing it with a system called Topics.

The core takeaway remains unchanged: using "free" software from an advertising company comes at a cost to your privacy.

Regardless of how Google's PR machine frames it, a browser that monitors which websites you visit and sells that information to advertisers is fundamentally a surveillance tool. In 2022, switching to a privacy-respecting browser is straightforward, with plenty of viable alternatives available.

What Is Google Topics?

According to Google, Topics is an interest-based advertising system. It works by monitoring your browsing habits and assigning you interest categories that advertising partners can use to target ads. Details are available on their API GitHub page.

The mechanism differs from FLoC in several ways:

1. Broader categories. Instead of algorithmic cohorts, Topics uses a curated list of approximately 350 interest categories (like "Fitness" or "Travel") that Chrome assigns based on browsing history.
2. Weekly rotation. Topics are recalculated weekly, and the browser stores only three weeks of topic history.
3. User visibility. Users can supposedly see and remove assigned topics through Chrome settings.
4. Random noise. Five percent of the time, Chrome returns a random topic instead of a real one, intended to add some privacy protection.

Why Topics Still Fails on Privacy

Despite these changes, the fundamental problems remain:

The browser still surveils you. Chrome continues to analyze which websites you visit and categorize your behavior. The core surveillance model is unchanged -- only the classification method differs.

Google controls the taxonomy. Google decides which categories exist and how sites map to them. This gives a single advertising company complete control over how user behavior is interpreted and monetized.

Topics can still be combined for fingerprinting. While individual topics are broad, the combination of topics across multiple weeks and sites can narrow down user identity. Three topics across three weeks creates thousands of possible combinations.

Opting out is not the default. Like FLoC before it, Topics is enabled by default in Chrome. Users must actively discover and disable the feature rather than opting in.

It is still advertising technology. Topics exists to serve Google's advertising business. Calling it a "privacy improvement" compares it against the worst possible baseline (unrestricted third-party cookies) rather than against genuine privacy, which would mean no behavioral tracking at all.

What Website Owners Should Know

Website owners can opt out of Topics by adding appropriate HTTP headers, similar to how FLoC could be blocked. However, the most effective approach remains eliminating invasive analytics and tracking from your site entirely.

Privacy-focused analytics tools that do not use cookies, do not track individuals, and do not share data with advertising networks represent the genuine privacy-first approach -- not marginally less invasive versions of surveillance technology.

The Real Solution

Use a browser that does not track you. Firefox, Brave, and Safari do not implement Topics or any equivalent behavioral profiling system. For website analytics, choose tools that collect only anonymized aggregate data and never feed information into advertising networks.

The evolution from third-party cookies to FLoC to Topics demonstrates that an advertising company will always find new ways to track users. The only reliable privacy strategy is choosing tools and services built by companies whose business model does not depend on surveillance.