Posted by enz 1/14/2026
> If a prompt appears unexpectedly, users may block it reflexively or accidentally, unaware that this decision creates a permanent block that is difficult to reverse. This context gap—rather than the feature itself—is a primary driver of high denial rates.
> If a user previously blocked location access when browsing a site (perhaps by accident or lack of context), clicking the element triggers a specialized recovery flow. This helps them re-enable location at the moment when they actually want to use location, without the friction of navigating deep into the browser's site settings.
Google sees "high denial rates" when they try ask users for their geolocation. This is a problem for Google's customers, the advertisers. So they introduce this <geolocation> HTML tag so that dark patterns can be employed to trick users into permanently sharing location even though they have blocked location sharing before.
If the Google engineers who are working on this feature would actually give a damn about users who decided to block geolocation access, this feature would be designed as a "temporary access to geolocation for duration of browser session".
So basically it is all about more tracking and less data privacy.
It's overdue that skilled engineers provide better solutions than this crap, but of course it's much easier to be apolitical and become a millionaire working for a bunch of tech bros who visited Epstein's island.
Also I’m not sure about the argument of context disconnect. Properly designed websites will only ask for (and prompt the location permission modal) when it really needs it.
> Zoom reported a 46.9% decrease in camera or microphone capture errors
That would be a net benefit because pages requesting location for no reason end up in the block list and don't annoy me anymore.
As noted in the intent to ship for both, these are a very specific narrow cases chipped off a bunch broader attempt to offer declarative ways to handle permissions in general, a <permission> element.
Intent-to-ship for geolocation: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/GL0Bk...
Earlier Page-Embedded Permissions Control (PEPC) proposal: https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/113 https://github.com/andypaicu/PEPC/blob/main/explainer.md
The root problem is that permissions right now are super hard to adjust for users (and the way they are exposed to the page is not very good at dealing with users turning permissions on and off either). It's imo very good that we are finally leaving this awful tarpit of design, & moving towards permissions being more fluid. I get that other browsers wanted to be conservative & not do a generic <permission> element, but given how big an improvement this feels like, I sort of wish it'd gotten the pass.
Show me the bus schedule for the nearest bus stop, show me the nearest store, share my location in a chat..
The browser's IP-based geolocation (as per what https://mylocation.org/ can find out from my session) is kilometers away.
Like the Meta/Yandex apps were doing, just not strictly for position tracking, but more centered toward pinpointing your unique id.
It's really disappointing how doubt and suspicion have rotted some people's brains. Any and every work being viewed with searing doubt is such an unfortunate fate, that consigns humanity away against progress and possibility.
As a developer of fun personal website toys for myself & friends, I want to do good things. I want a better web platform. Oh I can download third rate geo-ip databases to do a bad job inaccurately spying on people who maybe dont want to be spied on, and that won't work with VPN's/tailscale? So what? That sounds infernal as heck. None of the post engages with the subject matter, it's all whinge about something else.
And I didn't stop at geolocation. Usermedia is even more used, everyday by many many people. The ability to turn that in and off fast is crucial to users having control.
This morose-ith is right up there with the right wing batshittery that protestors are paid: people so far gone into a conspiracy world of vice that they literally cannot believe in good and hope, even when it's right ahead of them.
But, PS, Google, I still haven't seen any checks (actually I got a summer of code long long ago), so, please, get those moving!