For long already I use many personas/users of Chrome simultaneously. It's very useful. Especially when you create a dedicated shortcut to a service/web-site on a desktop or even pin it to the taskbar. So I have direct Gmail icon on my taskbar that launches GMail as a standalone headless window and for a particular Chrome persona. Next is another GMail icon (it's possible to change icons if you need or turn on in W10 taskbar settings illustration of Chrome persona in the bottom right corner) with a different account via different Chrome user. They both work simultaneously. For social accounts I use one persona, for business another, for news and entertainment third. So every session very comfortably is saved and loaded only to a selected persona when I start the session. Since any link in any tab could be opened via a different persona/user it's not a problem to open a link from twitter or facebook in completely different persona where I'm not logged in for socials and basically incognito for the services.
Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
321–330 of 332 posts
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Can’t recommend it enough, to be honest. Their dev team/CS is also extremely responsive (I generally hear from Lars). Honestly, it’s the only way I can handle using gmail regularly.
I can no longer edit but the first part got cut, instead the "No" can just be removed, to clarify.
I read it as a think-o'ed "No problem." anyway.
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, Google is making people stupider? Thank goodness we have you here to warn us with insightful analysis such as Google is "super creepy"!
I also warn kids about not following men giving them candy. To me it's obvious, to others it's not. Just look at Google usage. They are absolutely creepy.
Google does some things that I think are very cool. Google does some things I don't think are so cool. None of the things that Google does, however, can in any way be compared to the things that a child rapist does. Making that comparison is wrong.
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last time I tried Firefox, a few months ago, tab switching was painfully slow as compared to Chrome. I intend to give it another chance soon, though.
What about a hardware upgrade?
Lol - no. My computer isn't that old. Chrome switches tabs instantly. Firefox doesn't. I'm not going to buy a new computer to find out if Firefox will then switch tabs faster. Also, I've read similar complaints from others. Maybe it's faster now - I dunno. When Firefox's tab switching is faster, I'll give switching another go.
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#325It did not automatically login here.
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest feature holding me back from using Firefox is the inability to drag multiple tabs at once. I often "split" a chrome browser window into two this way, or combine two chrome windows into one.
In Nightly you can, using CTRL to select them. It's still a little buggy, though.
Oh cool. Thanks for the tip! Hopefully they polish it up and get it out.
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#327Does this apply to Chromium as well?
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#328The part when you are logged out from GMail when you log out from Chrome might be a bug. Logging into Chrome when logging into GMail? Don’t think so.
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#329"Google calls the feature "Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar" and a Chrome representative on the official Google Chrome Help Forum confirmed that this is the intended behavior. >This is an intended behaviour if you are using the same Google Account for your Gmail and Chrome. If yes, you'll be signed out of Chrome when you signed out of Gmail account. ... Good news is that it is possible currently to…
After following these steps, the browser says it's no longer logged in, BUT I still see my Google Account image on the top right of the browser. It's still doing some sort of syncing between my Google Account and my browser. This is too much of a breach of trust, I'm done with Chrome
Re: Tell HN: Using Gmail? You will be force logged into Chrome
#330Earlier 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.
People similarly dismissed concerns about information Facebook was sharing with third party apps that seemed to just provide quick entertainment like "the which celebrity are you most like quiz!" Years later, it turned out to be part of a massive data-mining operation meant to get information about voters.
You could point out reasons why this isn't the same thing, but you'd be missing the point. I, as an individual, can't fully assess the privacy impact of every single piece of technology I use, and what seems to be a benign feature backed by a corporation I trust could be anything but.
That being the case, we need to adopt certain heuristics to help defend our privacy. Granting as few permissions as possible for applications we use, and avoiding using a single identity across all of our devices is a good way to mitigate that risk.
Are you an individual that is willing to reduce your privacy a bit for added convenience? That's perfectly fine. But the ethical thing for Google to do would be to make this an opt-in feature, rather than an opt-out. The fact that they made this browser/Google Account sync the default was no accident. They want to gather more data on their users, and know if their users were stopped and prompted to think about whether or not they actually wanted this convenience, they would have less participating users. So they've made the unethical choice, and made this an opt-out feature.