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Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

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Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is super relevant for our business. Not only do we advertise on there, but I also sit on Messenger and answer computer and phone repair questions from friends, and get tagged in "Help! My computer stopped working" types of posts. It drives good business to our repair shops. Facebook has also replaced forums for our industry (cell phone/computer repair), so it's how we find out about the latest trends and inn…

That's interesting. I would have assumed that Reddit was a much better resource for at least the technical docs. Many subreddits include a crazy amount of very specific information about just about anything you can think of.

Totally agree in general; I've gone down the "Reddit rabbit hole" almost too many times to count.

Private groups on FB can be more discerning about their membership, which is also what makes them interesting.

Many of the cell phone repair groups I'm in require you to have a repair business, so the groups don't get flooded with what they call "plz bro" posts. (i.e. "How do I fix an iPhone screen?" beginner posts.)

It also forms a tighter community; we pretty much all know each other on there, so we refer business back and forth a lot, and use Messenger heavily to buy, sell, and just chat about really obscure or weird repairs that come in the door.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#72
post #49

> We’re also going to change the way we handle the clearing of auth cookies. In the current version of Chrome, we keep the Google auth cookies to allow you to stay signed in after cookies are cleared. We will change this behavior that so all cookies are deleted and you will be signed out. I really want to know who the internal champion was for getting the cookies to be perma-stored in the first place. It has to be so…

Based on what I know of the Chrome team, it was probably the conclusion of some UX manager or the result of a user study they did around Google authentication. If I had to guess: their end goal is not explicitly to collect more advertising data for Google, but it's to minimize friction around the use of Google services. This leads to decisions like the cookie one.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#73
I still haven't seen any clear statement from Google on whether or not being signed in to Chrome w/out enabling sync alters what data flows from browser to Google in any way.

If signing in to Chrome is completely without any data exchange, collection, aggregation, or reporting, then please say so.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#75
I have to say, I felt like I was one of the few supporters of this feature. But these changes make it even better and clearer for users and they might not have been made if there wasn't so much pushback. So, thanks everyone!

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#76

Unfortunately, Chrome 70 is also when `www` subdomain is slated to get re-hidden, and when web audio breaking changes are slated to get re-introduced. There's just too much to keep up with at this point. I'm happy about this change, it's a big move in the right direction. But it doesn't give me any confidence for the future. It's crazy that users have to do this every single release. It can't continue like this. I ha…

A Google representative has claimed on the domain hiding bug report that the change is shelved due to the feedback.

Edit: Permalink to the relevant comment: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=883038...

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#77
>While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome.

The pretext of this feature is supposedly that people who share computers are accidentally signed into someone else's account and this solves that, but why should this be done at the browser level?

I have a hard time believing that anyone who uses the family computer doesn't have their own account in the OS, where their Chrome profiles will be kept separate. I also have a hard time believing that this isn't just about making sure every session is authenticated to make cross-device tracking easier/possible. It's why every Google app on iOS seems to want you to log in. I think my suspicion is probably correct since they're making it opt-out rather than opt-in (knowing most won't).

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#78
post #49

> We’re also going to change the way we handle the clearing of auth cookies. In the current version of Chrome, we keep the Google auth cookies to allow you to stay signed in after cookies are cleared. We will change this behavior that so all cookies are deleted and you will be signed out. I really want to know who the internal champion was for getting the cookies to be perma-stored in the first place. It has to be so…

I find it interesting that you use the word “champion”. I had a discussion the other day with a well experienced consulting colleague of mine. His view was that every company has Champions which in turn reflect the company culture and values. For consulting companies these are partners. For google it used to be the CS PhDs (my guess). Maybe, this is changing at google right now and other people are becoming the “champions”, which might explain the underlying reasons this happened in the first place

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#79
post #77

>While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome. The pretext of this feature is supposedly that people who share computers are accidentally sig…

> I have a hard time believing that anyone who uses the family computer doesn't have their own account in the OS

What is that based on? I think it’s very unlikely on the contrary that the average “family computer” user (outside the tech bubble) would even know how to create a new Windows account, let alone bother to actually do it.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#80
post #77

>While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome. The pretext of this feature is supposedly that people who share computers are accidentally sig…

Sadly, its remarkably rare that people have accounts on a home PC. You can still setup a windows desktop with a password-less account, and many people do.
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