Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

191–200 of 332 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because it’s google? I get no advantage out of the feature, and it primarily serves to gather data on me. To me, that’s spyware.

Personally, I'm going to sign into both anyway. One less thing to sign into saves me time. That makes me happy. I dunno if I'm in the minority or not. But, it's a feature that at least some people find useful, so, I think branding it spyware is unjustified. It's not like it's a keylogger sending my data to who knows where which no reasonable person could ever find useful.

I use Gmail at work. I don’t want it to auto log me in.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it harmful to log in once to both apps that use the same account in the same browser? Gmail and Calendar already share the same login. Is that hurting anyone?

Multiple users may use the same browser/devices but different Gmail accounts. Even ignoring the ( many ) privacy implications, this causes problems for syncing across devices. Lets say I share a computer with my partner, but we have separate phones. Should I need to check which Gmail account is logged in before bookmarking something? Why can't we share a Chrome profile across those 3 devices while still maintaining s…

If you share a computer with someone else, each of you should have your own user accounts. Then each user account will have its own profile data, including which accounts are logged in.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that the feature will result in some net benefit for Google (at some potential expanse to users/public) but there's no such guarantee. Historically, the great Google products are made from scratch (or bought early) and stand by themselves. Their not-so-good products or features are the result of some elaborate corporate thinking that comes out under phrases like "Identity consistency between browser and co…

Why is it harmful to log in once to both apps that use the same account in the same browser? Gmail and Calendar already share the same login. Is that hurting anyone?

Because a lot of us have a work Gmail account and a personal Gmail account.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm going to sign into both anyway. One less thing to sign into saves me time. That makes me happy. I dunno if I'm in the minority or not. But, it's a feature that at least some people find useful, so, I think branding it spyware is unjustified. It's not like it's a keylogger sending my data to who knows where which no reasonable person could ever find useful.

I use Gmail at work. I don’t want it to auto log me in.

That's fair. Saying it's a feature you don't like is reasonable. IMO, calling it spyware is too much.

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

#195
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple users may use the same browser/devices but different Gmail accounts. Even ignoring the ( many ) privacy implications, this causes problems for syncing across devices. Lets say I share a computer with my partner, but we have separate phones. Should I need to check which Gmail account is logged in before bookmarking something? Why can't we share a Chrome profile across those 3 devices while still maintaining s…

If you share a computer with someone else, each of you should have your own user accounts. Then each user account will have its own profile data, including which accounts are logged in.

Not sure why you're being so harshly downvoted, Chromium and derivatives have pretty solid profile switching. Doing this would actually be less work than signing out/in to other accounts.

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

#196

Once again G Suite customers get the shaft. I have a personal Gmail account, and a business G Suite account, and this change makes working with the two accounts a complete pain. All my years of Chrome bookmarks/settings/etc. are associated with my personal account, so I want the browser itself to always be logged in with that identity. But I want to be logged into my business G Suite email account "by default" when I…

You might want to look into the custom URL feature of GSuite. https://support.google.com/a/answer/53340?hl=en

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it harmful to log in once to both apps that use the same account in the same browser? Gmail and Calendar already share the same login. Is that hurting anyone?

Because a lot of us have a work Gmail account and a personal Gmail account.

Sure, and this would just result in two separate profiles in Chrome.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use Chrome Profiles feature which basically gives you an entirely separate browser. Each profile can be associated to an offline/local account or a Google account that syncs everywhere. It allows you to keep personal, work, and anything else completely separate. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824

This is not useful to me because it creates multiple windows. I don't want that separation. I want what I have now. It was very good.

Does it actually work now? How do you manage two separate logins in a single window in Chrome. FF manages this with containers but I know of no way of doing this with Chrome.

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

#199

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.

The only reason I use chrome is the easy debugger hookup for VSCode. If anyone has any tips on how to get that running with FF, I'm all ears!

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... Chrome has had this feature for MUCH longer than Firefox.

If you mean profiles, Firefox has had it even longer, albeit with poor UI.

Look I'm a contributor to Firefox and even I think it's a stretch to say that FF has multi-profile support. I mean the feature is technically there but it's unusable by everyone except FF nerds. It's a special kind of hell where something like

    FIREFOX_PROFILE_DIR=~/.profile1 firefox

    FIREFOX_PROFILE_DIR=~/.profile2 firefox
would actually be an improvement on the UX.
Post reply on HN