I am a little paranoid which is an unfortunate side-effect of my profession. And due to this side-effect I always keep my third-party cookies switched off. I also use Firefox most of the time, unless it is required to do otherwise. I have been using it since version 0.75 and it is a bit like till death do us part. And this is how I ran into a very funny problem about a year ago: Google began to ask for third party cookies in order to allow you to download the content.
My guess is Google decided to switch from client-side trackers to server-side trackers sometime during summer 2021. They have already been tracking users by means of a fingerprint, and a fingerprint was (and is) built around user's device data, such as network data, payment data like cards (a card number carries information about the bank it was issued by), unique configuration of your device, user activity patterns, etc, etc. Well, they do own about 3/4 of the mobile market, don't they? And they do that without giving the end user the root access to the system.