Google wants to stop the ability to do Browser Fingerprinting because they can't control it. They've tried to come up with alternatives to appease the advertising community.

A couple of years ago we heard of FLOC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) where users are tracked into groups based on interests determined by their browsing history. In fact this was tested without preamble and users may not have known that they have been categorized and that third parties were able to obtain this data. Now Google is dumping FLOC and moving to another concept they call TOPICS.

Believe it or not, they explain this new tracking concept as a way to protect your privacy. The question is, what is Google's real intent and is this a lot of smoke and mirrors which obfuscate their real intent?