Live data from Hacker News

Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

blog.google

81–90 of 475 posts

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#82
The fact that this all happened in the first place is really telling. It's nice that they've backed these features off (a bit) but there's a reasonably clear signal to take away from this.

When company and customer interest are misaligned this is the result. There are plenty of cases where a strong leader in the company with a strong ideology can hold this stuff back, but companies normally outlast those individuals and eventually there's nobody left to stand in the way.

It's wonderful that we were able to make enough noise and fuss that the cost/benefit shifted sufficiently but this will happen again, and then again, and so on... And eventually, we'll be tired of yelling or won't be able to yell loud enough.

Vote with you attention and your data and your money. Switch to Fastmail or Protonmail. Use Firefox or Brave. Buy a System76 laptop instead of yet another not-so-great-for-developers-anymore Apple macbook pro. Choose these options even if they aren't as good because if we don't support the handful of companies who are trying to do something other than gobble up all of our attention and data we're in for a really dark future for the web.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#84
post #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.

I don’t know why but I get an intense feeling of disgust at “people at higher position” making stupid decisions like this one.

My cynicism kicks in and I feel like they know exactly what they’re doing, but the bottom line is more important than anything including causing a PR storm on HN and tech blogs.

Strip down emperor’s clothes and truly reveal the nature of big corporations and their greed to ruin everything for the benefit of the shareholders and their bonus targets - ethics, privacy and environment.

Perhaps I have a problem with extreme levels of cynicism.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#85
One positive, is that the response was fast and direct. In the past, negative user feedback has tended to be buried, or felt like it, or ignored, or felt like it.

This time, somebody decided the only clean path out was to be responsive: to make changes which reflected community concern and to tell people about them

Which I think, is good. I vastly prefer the google which tells people it listened, to the one which says it listens but doesn't tell us whats happening to the inputs we give.

(thats the one which lies behind any three-dots 'send feedback' hooks in almost any google app or s/w I use: I never get the sense anyone reads it, cares about it)

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#86

Claims to want more feedback. "Blog" post has no comment field.

And their 'email' button opens a email with no address: Button: http://prntscr.com/kyrhrf Email Opened: http://prntscr.com/kyri1i

It's obviously a "share via email" button, not a "email the senior product managers in charge of Chrome!" button.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those bugs have to do with 100% CPU on rMBP. Their about using an inefficient presentation path which increases GPU power usage. You can mitigate this today by setting gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true. Further, Firefox Beta has additional texture upload performance improvements that will reduce cpu usage. If you're actually experiencing 100% cpu usage, post a profile using https://perf-html.io/ and…

Steps to reproduce: 1) Pick a rMBP. Any one. 2) Set display options - "more space" under System Preferences. 3) Run Firefox. Load any website. No extensions; safe mode doesn't matter. 4) 100%+ CPU, fans kick up and run high, system gets hot and slows to a crawl. Chrome and Safari run totally fine under the same conditions. It's documented pretty thoroughly in the first Bugzilla link I posted; the second one is an off…

I spent a few minutes trying to replicate on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) with Firefox 62.0.2 and could not replicate, browsing a number of resource intense sites.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#88
post #36

Everyone seems to be arguing the utilitarian merit of this feature, but I just don't like what it signals for Google's approach to the web. They're building in features that integrate their browser into their web pages. As far as I'm aware no other major browser holder has done anything of that sort, but I'm probably missing some examples.

It does seem weird that this would be lauded. I want my browser to be completely independent of what I'm doing on the website because there is no telling what the browser might be doing on my OS and frankly if I want to sign into a website, I will. It's not any of my browser's business what I do on the websites I visit. This seems like a fundamental part of sandboxing but maybe other people don't see it that way. I i…

> maybe other people don't see it that way

If the HN backlash is anything to go by, a lot of people see it the same way as you (me included).

Every company will act in it's best interest not ours, particularly in the case of Google who are blatantly building out a vision of what they want the web to be for 1 singular purpose: to more closely monitor you for the purpose of selling your online activity to the highest bidder.

This much influence being concentrated is bad for the web.

Viva la revolución!

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#89

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…

We also need to avoid situations where a positive reversal/fix distracts people from the introduction of a new problem, like URL display changes related to AMP.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#90
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that change was merited because of the "signed into chrome vs google" issue they were trying to solve. Say I clear my cookies on a signed-in, syncing account. With G Cookies also deleted, I may wonder "Why is my picture in the top right but no Google services are using it??". To us, it's clear that chrome sign-in is different from google sign-in, but to others, it may not be.

Hang on. The logical thing to do, if your real aim is to have browser sign in state reflect cookie state, is to sign out the browser when someone clears their cookies. That would make total sense to users. I think this is clear evidence that Google made this change to keep more users signed into Google so they can collect more of your data without telling you.

The article says that is exactly what they are going to do now: when you clear all cookies, you will be signed out.
Post reply on HN