You bring up some interesting and valid points, but I wanted to comment on your second reason, i.e regulatory risk, for Google to keep Privacy Sandbox as a Plan B. Its funny because the regulators are already interested in this Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, but not as something for strengthening user privacy, but further strengthening Google's hold over the ad market business. The regulators have deemed Privacy Sandbox anti-competitive. Here are some links to the ongoing lawsuits and open investigations into this issue. Google antitrust suit takes aim at Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox Texas announces a multi-state antitrust suit against Google UK CMA Plans to Investigate Google Chrome’s “Privacy Sandbox” for Potential Anticompetitive Behavior . So instead of keeping Privacy Sandbox as a plan B, it is actually another reason for Google to nix it to avoid running afoul of the regulators. And if Google does not move ahead with this, I doubt other browsers will, because of reasons already mentioned in this thread. By the way, the regulatory scrutiny does not apply to Firefox's PPA or other browsers, firstly because of low market share, and secondly because unlike Google, the other browsers are not advertising companies.
We will see if prosecutors will win or lose in court. Anyway it is sad that for prosecutors concerns about other ads companies businesses are more important than consumers. Keep in mind that for enforcement agencies are beneficiaries of current status quo, because they may use location tracking for investigative purposes. There arę some articles https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/ Your Ad Data Is Now Powering Government Surveillance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-11/surveillance-company-turns-ad-data-into-government-tracking-tool And another Exploring the surveillance partnership between the government and data brokers https://therecord.media/byron-tau-interview-surveillance-government-data-brokers that shows it is in the interest of enforcement agencies and prosecutors to leave status quo unchanged...
Yes it is sad. Big businesses come first, consumers come second. The lawsuits and investigations are irrelevant now as Google has canceled their Privacy Sandbox Initiative in its current form. So cross-site cookies are not going away any time soon, and that would make ad companies and regulators happy.
PPA is tied to allowed telemetry, no this -> no that. disabled telemetry on the other hand means that such users wont take part in the development of firefox with such minmal feedback channel, so there is nothing to complain on their side when mozilla decided to change this or that without their knowledge. has pros and cons. to make something very clear: PPA is only a measurement, it measures which ads are shown in firefox - after any kind of filtering. the result of all users is gathered, gets some noise, and submitted to "anonymous". "anonymous" is trying to help website owners to improve their advertisement - if those want to. mozilla said that floc, privacy sandbox and topics api do not offer enough privacy so they invented their own measuring. and in fact PPA was announced 2022 when acquiring "anonymous". PPA has nothing to do with showing ads in a hidden manor. while google has iced there development and deliver ads as usual like other spreaders in a aggressive way, mozilla try to improve ads in a less agressive way which has a win-win. less ads but the right ads. eyeo tried this with "acceptable ads", and got also some really bad feedback.
i dont know if "many" is counted, or how it works for real, because firefox need the information that ads were blocked in the way they were delivered. does it only count with its advanced tracking protection? what i know that firefox is able to recognize blocked elements by ad blocker. a lot of if then maybe.
