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Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

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Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#131

Post by exolymph »

omaranto wrote: post #127
Androider wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my workflow! https://xkcd.com/1172/ That's a good suggestion, but I just don't need or want to maintain two sets of bookmarks, install each plugin twice, configure each setting in two places, etc. But I guess I'll have to... sigh.

You could use the work profile you create exclusively for gmail and analytics, etc. That is, you could leave that profile pretty plain, not mainting bookmarks and plugins for it.

This is what I'm currently doing as a workaround, and it's still annoying.

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#132

Post by rocky1138 »

tokyodude wrote: post #102
the_duke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it's handy to just use Firefox.

firefox's multiple profile support is crap. I actually do want multiple profiles that do things like sync passwords, bookmarks, extensions, themes across machines per profile. AFAIK firefox can't run multiple profiles at once

`firefox -P`

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#133

Post by fbuserthrowaway »

tobltobs wrote: post #69
cdancette wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an option for everyone

Your live depends on facebook?

The life I've built depends on communication, and the people and groups I wish to communicate with mostly use FB.

The non-profit I volunteer with organizes everything over FB. The union I work under announces almost everything over FB. I literally never look at my FB "feed" but I've got 5 private groups that I check every day. If I stopped using FB, I'd be completely out of the loop with almost everything I do.

I suspect that's how a lot of the world operates. FB is free and easy and reliable and everybody already has an account. It lets people post text and photos and comments, and tag other people, and report when they've seen something. That's everything we used to use email for (and a bit more), but more convenient.

I got my first cell phone a couple months ago. It's a lot easier for me to live without a cell phone than to live without FB. No cell phone means I have to wait a couple hours to read my messages. No FB would mean I wouldn't get organization news at all.

Even for people who hate FB on principle, they've never suggested an alternative that meets our needs better today. Possibly Google's services could, but a significant number of people I know don't have Google accounts (or use Gmail), and the people who hate FB usually hate Google just as much. Possibly Yammer, but ditto everything (and Microsoft).

Decentralized social networks are a cool idea, but until FB starts breaking so bad that we're unable to communicate about our upcoming project, we have no reason to consider switching to anything else.

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#134

Post by JoshMnem »

It started with an older version. Logging into Google automatically linked your Google account to the settings page.

At least in the last version, clearing your private data (ctrl-shift-delete) no longer deleted Google cookies. To completely log out required manually digging into the advanced settings and then rebooting the browser.

Google fundamentally doesn't respect user privacy, and people should use Firefox.

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#135

Post by yesenadam »

RaleyField wrote: post #49
williamscales wrote: post #9

You didn't say why this is important to you so it comes off as a bit of a complaint for the sake of it. Are you concerned about your web history going to your Google account? You can turn that off. Don't believe that will really turn it off? Then don't believe that Chrome wasn't already logging your web history without your knowledge. Is it sad that respect for privacy has degraded this far? Absolutely. Is the mergin…

> to you so it comes off as a bit of a complaint for the sake of it. People like you really rise my blood pressure. No, it's not important to him/her, bad defaults[1] are important for everyone because they are incorrect design. The correct design is not to synchronize anything before obtaining informed consent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern

People like you really rise my blood pressure.

May I suggest that this is a very ugly, condescending, dismissive way of talking to anyone. The phrase has no place on a forum like HN.

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#136

Post by beckler »

JoshMnem wrote: post #134

It started with an older version. Logging into Google automatically linked your Google account to the settings page. At least in the last version, clearing your private data (ctrl-shift-delete) no longer deleted Google cookies. To completely log out required manually digging into the advanced settings and then rebooting the browser. Google fundamentally doesn't respect user privacy, and people should use Firefox.

I completely switched whenever FF quantum was released to stable. The experience is amazing. I will say I think chrome dev tools are better though.

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#138

Post by kstrauser »

rosser wrote: post #84
kstrauser wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? My employer uses gmail, which I access via Mail.app exclusively. I bet I open the web app maybe once or twice a year, usually by clicking a link in a calendar event. It's perfectly possibly to use gmail-the-service without using gmail-the-app.

I find Mail.app to have a terrible UX, but I did try it, thanks. My standing solution is to use one browser to log into big-G services, another to log into FB, and a third for everything else.

It's totally OK not to like Mail.app, of course, but I'll still posit that you choose to use Gmail in your browser. You don't have to. You do have alternatives, but prefer your current multi-browser workflow.

Again, that's perfectly alright! Just remember that if you reach the point that you can't stand it anymore, you do have other options available to you.

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#139

Post by JoshMnem »

beckler wrote: post #136
JoshMnem wrote: post #134

It started with an older version. Logging into Google automatically linked your Google account to the settings page. At least in the last version, clearing your private data (ctrl-shift-delete) no longer deleted Google cookies. To completely log out required manually digging into the advanced settings and then rebooting the browser. Google fundamentally doesn't respect user privacy, and people should use Firefox.

I completely switched whenever FF quantum was released to stable. The experience is amazing. I will say I think chrome dev tools are better though.

I tend to reach for Firefox's dev tools (or a node REPL) more often these days. Firefox has a much better CSS editor. I will run some dev tools in Chromium but avoid it for browsing.

Once I saw that my account was linked to Chrome/Chromium without my permission, I cleared everything out of Chrome and stopped using it as a secondary browser. My secondary browser is now a separate Firefox profile:

    alias ff='firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote &'

Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome

#140

Post by hegz »

lurker456 wrote: post #22

The cynic in me thinks this is in anticipation of GDPR related challenges. Users that accepted a TOS are easier to track (at least, it's easier to mount a legal argument that some tracking and profile linking is ok) compared to users that never accepted anything at all. next up: push for new standards that favor chrome over other browsers.

The gdpr agreement form on websites usually requires you to enable 3rd party scripts and cookies otherwise you get hit with endless popups about it. Someone should make a browser extension that automatically denies every gdpr popup.
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