Which they could also report on. The fact they’re removing a standard metric they’ve relied on, rather than relegate it, shows they have fear this metric is going to be detrimental to publish. You can fairly safely assume it’s going to go down. It’s no longer sexy, tik tok is killing it, and most that would be on it, are, and are discovering it’s not greatly beneficial to them and spending less time on it. It is the start of the decline. How long and how fast is the thing we do not know.
I think the important thing is consent to use data. If I can control what data I share with them, it isn’t the end of the world. If I choose to not, and it’s honoured, then this is a good thing. I’d prefer this approach funding development to Mozilla not being able to compete.
Mozilla is a far superior company to Google.