Intent to Prototype: Topics API

[Yao Xiao]

Contact Emails
yao...@chromium.org
jka...@chromium.org
ed...@google.com
cilv...@google.com

Explainer
https://github.com/jkarlin/topics

Summary
Periodically, Chrome will classify the latest history hostnames to topics (i.e. the user’s browsing interests) into one of a small number of coarse-grained Topics. The topics, subject to filtering, can be exposed to websites via the document.browsingTopics() API. This API aims to support interest-based-advertising use cases when third-party cookies are deprecated.

Motivation
The intent of the Topics API is to provide callers (including third-party ad-tech or advertising providers on the page that run script) with coarse-grained advertising topics that the page visitor might currently be interested in. These topics will supplement the contextual signals from the current page and can be combined to help find an appropriate advertisement for the visitor.

Risks
Interoperability and Compatibility
No signals from other browsers.

Privacy
See the privacy considerations in the explainer.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)?
Not on Android WebView.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?
Not yet but they will be.

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status
https://chromestatus.com/feature/5680923054964736