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Why I’m done with Chrome

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#21

Post by MentallyRetired »

whelchel wrote: post #19
brian-armstrong wrote: post #10

Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.

Also a fan. I'm also switching permanently to Firefox after this incident rather than use multiple browsers depending on the purpose.

I also switched to Firefox. I wanted to give Opera a try but they also use Chromium, where this feature now exists.

Firefox it is, and they have done a great job with the new version.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#22

Post by hellofunk »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #10

Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.

I wish I could use it but it has serious performance problems on macOS. I tried and it was just terrible. (thought not all Mac users have problems, quite a number do, and Mozilla has an open issue asking for debugging logs from Macs to find the reasons).

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#23

Post by aphextron »

kris-s wrote: post #12

Google is incentivized to do this, they make good money off of it. It’s boring and true. They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit. Until then use browsers like Firefox or Safari where the incentive to be creepy is far smaller.

> They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit

Which as we know from things like Facebook, that limit will never be reached. These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about. Even we software engineers barely understand the scope of what Google is capable of. It's going to take a principled stance from within the industry to push back against the encroachment of these corporations on personal privacy.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#24

Post by anothergoogler »

stefano wrote: post #17
anothergoogler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Ubuntu's Chromium package and it isn't "un-googled" at all (69.0.3497.81-0ubuntu0.18.04.1). Any Ubuntu users have tips?

Firefox is completely ungoogled once you change the default search engine.

Well, with Firefox I have a separate issue which is that I never know when an update will include default-enabled integration with Pocket, a phone service, or some other startup that's scratched Mozilla's back in the past six months. So Firefox isn't a replacement. Also I was badly burned by Firefox removing support for XUL extensions, and refuse to depend on that browser again. I have serious misgivings with how Firefox is managed. You're not being helpful since you know I know about Firefox, and my question is about Chrome.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#25

Post by [deleted] »

heartbreak wrote: post #16
zbrozek wrote: post #9

I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history. They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.

This feature doesn’t enable sync. That’s something that members of the Chrome team have been patiently trying to explain to Matthew Green on Twitter for several days now. [0] https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1043505744144826369?s=21

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#26

Post by smacktoward »

zbrozek wrote: post #9

I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history. They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

-- Upton Sinclair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#27

Post by orbifold »

At least on iOS and macOS I see no reason not to use Safari, Edge on Windows is pretty good too. Power users will stop recommending Chrome to the average user after these changes and over time market share will hopefully decline.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#28

Post by 0x0 »

heartbreak wrote: post #16
zbrozek wrote: post #9

I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history. They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.

This feature doesn’t enable sync. That’s something that members of the Chrome team have been patiently trying to explain to Matthew Green on Twitter for several days now. [0] https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1043505744144826369?s=21

It shows a big blue banner (or is it a button? I don't dare click it) announcing the current state as "Sync as ". If the developers need to explain this repeatedly over twitter to a professional, what impression do you think normal users who don't follow a niche twitter discussion get?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#29

Post by magicalist »

> For all we know, the new approach has privacy implications even if sync is off. The Chrome developers claim that with “sync” off, a Chrome has no privacy implications. This might be true. But when pressed on the actual details, nobody seems quite sure.

This seems more like, I'm being told the thing I'm worried about isn't happening, but I don't believe it.

Which is fine, but not sure what's changed with what's being done, rather than a change making clearer what's possible (when signed into google, chrome has your google cookie).

> For example, if I have my browser logged out, then I log in and turn on “sync”, does all my past (logged-out) data get pushed to Google? What happens if I’m forced to be logged in, and then subsequently turn on “sync”? Nobody can quite tell me if the data uploaded in these conditions is the same. These differences could really matter.

Again, how is that possibility any different than before this change?

It seems this is mostly a well intentioned (for a subset of chrome users) but poorly thought out UI change (giant blue button).

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#30

Post by rhizome »

heartbreak wrote: post #16
zbrozek wrote: post #9

I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history. They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.

This feature doesn’t enable sync. That’s something that members of the Chrome team have been patiently trying to explain to Matthew Green on Twitter for several days now. [0] https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1043505744144826369?s=21

Well I went to turn this login thing off and the only way to do it was to click a button under the heading "Sync" that said "Turn Off."

But if these things are unrelated, I guess we'll just have to chalk that up to Google's famously shitty product management and design skills.

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