If you're using a non-user-hostile browser, these strategies are already heavily limited by default and are already not a concern. Every Firefox release is making significant improvements on reducing the fingerprinting footprint of the browser, and several user-hostile API features proposed by Google have been rejected by them and Safari to prevent expanded fingerprinting.
Chrome's original announcement about phasing out third-party cookies is explicit about new technologies like Privacy Sandbox (which includes FLoc) being how third-party cookies will no longer be needed:
"After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete. Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers, and advertisers, and we have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds, we plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome. Our intention is to do this within two years." -- https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
The FLoC proposal (and others) are happening now because of the coming cookiepocalypse.
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
If only Firefox was removing cookies, that would be a problem, because Chrome could just ignore them. But with Safari on board as well, and with the entire iOS market at stake for sites that try to ignore the policy...
If Chrome doesn't remove third-party cookies, they will be the only browser anywhere not to do so. Chrome's original stance might have been conditional on finding a replacement, but I'm not sure they still have a choice at this point. I don't think Google is going to hand that selling point to Apple, and you're seeing yourself in these comments that a lot of the people following this issue didn't accept Chrome's original promise as conditional.
And maybe Chrome is confident enough in their market position that they're willing to take that hit and they think it won't matter. Maybe they're even right. From my perspective, breaking Chrome's dominance on the web is a necessary thing that needs to happen eventually for the health of the web, so every time that Chrome makes their browser worse in a highly public way, that's a win.
Remember that Firefox and Safari are already blocking the majority of third-party cookies online, and those browsers still work today, the web hasn't broken for them. So every year that Chrome spends delaying that deprecation is another year where people like me can point out that they're lagging behind literally the entire market on privacy.
It's simple: We force Google to stop tracking us, or we stop using Google products.
