Product Updates Based on Your Feedback • Hacker News Board

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#201

Post by snaky » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:40 AM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #183

lern_too_spel wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try being a cell phone OEM who wants to use Android but without Google integration. Impossible. Tell that to Vivo, Oppo, Honor, Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu, OnePlus, Lenovo, Qiku, Smartisan, Amazon, etc.

Yet most of them have to install play store. There is no going away from Google completely unless you're Amazon on large budget and you make a big branch off Android source.

> most of them have to install play store

Not in China. Some of them have an "International ROM" with play store, but not because they have to, just for non-Chinese users convenience.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#202

Post by lrpublic » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

Too little, too late. The cat is really and truly out of the bag.

As Microsoft did with Windows 10 Google have done with Chrome they have moved the capture of telemetry and personal data from their network to the users platform.

In the case of Chrome the community have the choice to fork our platform and thank google for their contribution, but say no thanks to thier continued stuardship of it.

Sometimes I wonder if senior execs really understand how precarious open source based business models are - like politics we can vote and change the leaders if they stop acting for the common good.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#203

Post by hendzen » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

lrpublic wrote: post #202

Too little, too late. The cat is really and truly out of the bag. As Microsoft did with Windows 10 Google have done with Chrome they have moved the capture of telemetry and personal data from their network to the users platform. In the case of Chrome the community have the choice to fork our platform and thank google for their contribution, but say no thanks to thier continued stuardship of it. Sometimes I wonder if…

Who is committing to chrome? Who is fixing bugs reported by users?

Google employees. The community is... mostly users. Any fork of Chrome will likely fail, because there is no magical community of privacy minded developers that has the time and expertise to develop Chrome, which is a massive and highly complex piece of software.

If you really feel this way, just switch to Firefox. Mozilla actually has a team of developers who fix and improve it.

Note that a majority of Mozilla's funding comes from royalties paid by Google for ads clicked on SERPs inbound from the Google search box. So Google has the power to control Mozilla if they really needed to.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#204

Post by millstone » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #133

fermienrico wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has invested billions into search and it is nearly impossible for a small startup to invade the search business. For example, imagine a company that allows you to search the internet without ads but charging say $2.99/month fee to use it. Even if I am willing to pay, the search accuracy and ability for a small company to compete with google is nearly impossible. So here we are. Perhaps I’ll switch to DuckDuckG…

The endless corporate loop is natural. Everything in this universe is on an endless loop and nothing lasts forever. Just get used to change and use whatever is legit at the moment.

Don't endless loops last forever by definition?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#205

Post by danShumway » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #162

danShumway wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it been shelved from Chrome 70? The last that I heard, it was temporarily removed in Chrome 69, and `www` would be reintroduced in 70. Unless things have changed again since then, `m` was the only change that was actually shelved.

See my edit. They have confirmed it is not going live in 70.

Nice! I'll be honest, I did not expect them to reverse course on that. That makes me a bit happier about this whole thing.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#206

Post by grey-area » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #18

dannyw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One nasty change was that clearing all cookies no longer cleared Google cookies with these changes. That is a big, privacy-impacting change.

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.

So instead of putting in bizarre kludges in various parts of the UI fix the underlying issue - browser login should not be a prominent feature (it should be called sync bookmarks/history in settings somewhere), google logins should not be displayed in browser chrome and google websites should not get special treatment (either in cookies or login status).

That’s why people are complaining - they see that google clearly wants to privilege their own sites and logins in chrome and push the users to always be signed in with google across any site. Great for google, bad for user privacy and the open web.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#207

Post by murukesh_s » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #12

I have already switched to Firefox and loving it (Facebook container, tracking protection enabled), but these changes are welcome and responsive. I hope this is a wake up call that privacy implications need to be seriously considered during product design (even if the intent was better UX), and hidden changes without any UI/notice is going to make issues blow up far more than if there was clear in-app communication.

I think it did hurt and visible in their stats otherwise they wouldn't do it so soon.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#208

Post by ssijak » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 5:17 AM UTC

ericabiz wrote: post #22

ben174 wrote: post #9

I have no doubt this is a direct result of the feedback in the hacker news thread. Googlers read our comments and take them seriously when there is true merit. Keep making noise folks, it matters.

Agreed. Now: does Mozilla read these? I tried to switch to Firefox, but was stymied by a bug where Firefox consumes 100%+ CPU on MacBook Pro Retinas. Firefox is basically unusable with this bug; Facebook takes forever to load, and even Reddit r/firefox shows "A webpage is slowing down your browser" bar at the top. Active relevant bugs are here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.moz…

That is why I switched from Chrome to Safari for the daily driver, and Firefox for webdev stuff only

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#209

Post by daveFNbuck » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

koolba wrote: 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…

If they hadn't perma-stored the cookies, we'd all be pointing out how stupid it is that clearing your cookies logs you out of the browser. This would be clear evidence of what a stupid idea it is to match browser sign-in state to your cookies.

There'd probably be a blog post about how Chrome 70 will automatically create fresh Google cookies to keep you logged in to the browser after you delete them.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#210

Post by tempestn » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

If sync is left disabled, what else does signing into the browser do? I normally use Firefox, where my understanding is that when you sign in, you're specifically signing in to Firefox sync. Since these are separate options on Chrome, presumably there are other functions tied to browser login.