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Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

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Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#291

Post by SquareWheel »

ken wrote: post #214
School-Cotton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, I think that's exactly what danShumway meant by "users have to do this every single release", i.e., give feedback about a big upcoming change that should never have been made in the first place. One week it's the domain hiding, another week it's cookie clearing. Who knows what Google is planning to change next time? It's not sustainable for us to go reactive every month. There's an awfully big disconnect if the…

>Who knows what Google is planning to change next time?

It's not exactly a secret. Go download Canary and see what's in the pipeline.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#292

Post by z3t4 »

When I found out the Google update service secretly wake up at night to scan all my hard drive's they where quick to remove that "feature", but I'll never use a Google product again. (it could also have been a malware or virus). But who cares right ? Today everyone uploads their IP to the big vendors who's business model is far from only providing cloud storage.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#293

Post by TekMol »

cm2187 wrote: post #275

Won’t change my mind and will stick to Firefox after having switched because of this. First I don’t want to be logged in in my browser at all. Second, and probably more important, software is about trust. Even for an open source project, no one has the time to review millions of lines of code. So unfortunately one has to rely on what one believes is the behavior of the authors of the software. And what google did is…

    I don’t want to be logged in in my browser at all
Same here. Why does Chrome log you in in the first place?

I mean I know it from the companies perspective of course. They want to consolidate as much data about you as possible. And tie you into their ecosystem.

But what is the user facing benefit? Syncing your bookmarks across devices?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#294

Post by lwhi »

cm2187 wrote: post #275

Won’t change my mind and will stick to Firefox after having switched because of this. First I don’t want to be logged in in my browser at all. Second, and probably more important, software is about trust. Even for an open source project, no one has the time to review millions of lines of code. So unfortunately one has to rely on what one believes is the behavior of the authors of the software. And what google did is…

I do think Google has turned a corner recently.

They've achieved so much ubiquity, that their offerings are becoming incompatible with an open web.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#295

Post by RossM »

TekMol wrote: post #293
cm2187 wrote: post #275

Won’t change my mind and will stick to Firefox after having switched because of this. First I don’t want to be logged in in my browser at all. Second, and probably more important, software is about trust. Even for an open source project, no one has the time to review millions of lines of code. So unfortunately one has to rely on what one believes is the behavior of the authors of the software. And what google did is…

I don’t want to be logged in in my browser at all Same here. Why does Chrome log you in in the first place? I mean I know it from the companies perspective of course. They want to consolidate as much data about you as possible. And tie you into their ecosystem. But what is the user facing benefit? Syncing your bookmarks across devices?

> But what is the user facing benefit?

Syncing bookmarks, recently opened tabs, passwords, autofill(?). These are genuine benefits when you're working with laptops, desktops, phones and tablets. Whether they're worth the cost of data mining is another matter of course.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#296

Post by ThePhysicist »

I don't see how having the sign-in sync turned on by default can be compatible with "privacy by design and default" as mandated e.g. by the GDPR. I wonder if they will have to offer a EU version of Chrome soon therefore.

Anyway, 90-95 % of users will probably just stick with the default value because they either don't know about the option or don't care enough to change it, hence from Google's perspective introducing it won't hurt their data collection efforts that much while they can at least say they did something to protect people's privacy. This is why I think "privacy by default" is so important, and it's sad to see that some of the largest players in the data collection space still ignore it.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#298

Post by wiz21c »

statictype wrote: post #248
theon144 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A lot of our software's more complex interfaces are Chrome-first since its faster to develop - yesterday was the first time I made a serious consideration to change that approach. Heh, I wonder if the next privacy blunder from Google will make you further reconsider your "voluntary vendor lock-in" approach :)

I said Chrome-first. Not Chrome-only.

yeah like in "this is just temporary code we put in production, we'll clean it later" :-) :-)

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#299

Post by TekMol »

RossM wrote: post #295
TekMol wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to be logged in in my browser at all Same here. Why does Chrome log you in in the first place? I mean I know it from the companies perspective of course. They want to consolidate as much data about you as possible. And tie you into their ecosystem. But what is the user facing benefit? Syncing your bookmarks across devices?

> But what is the user facing benefit? Syncing bookmarks, recently opened tabs, passwords, autofill(?). These are genuine benefits when you're working with laptops, desktops, phones and tablets. Whether they're worth the cost of data mining is another matter of course.

    These are genuine benefits when you're working
    with laptops, desktops, phones and tablets.
I work with all of these devices. Yet I don't want any of that syncing.

The thought that Google wants to send my 'recently opened tabs' to their servers makes me shudder. So they get the whole browsing history of every one of their users? Of all the pages that have nothing to do with them?

Same with passwords. So they have a gigantic database with all of their users passwords for all the services the users use? Even those totally unrelated to Google?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#300

Post by kaskavalci »

seibelj wrote: post #16
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 did as well. DuckDuckGo, ublock origin, privacy badger. I haven’t used Firefox seriously in 5 years or so and I’m very pleased with the experience. To be honest, it’s best to use an independent company for your internet browser. Google’s incentives and business model no longer matches web browsing for someone who cares about privacy.

and pi.hole. Privacy at its best.
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