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Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

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Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#371

Post by danShumway »

zavi wrote: post #246
danShumway wrote: post #30

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…

It's not targeted to technical communities. Chrome's market share is 50% and growing. It became successful in the first place because it's fast and simple. It's clearly targeted to average Joe by design, not programmers.

A couple things:

Many of the complaints that Chrome has gotten are not specific to technical communities. People were mad about `www` not because the technical communities have a thing for seeing the subdomains, but because there's a risk that average Joes can be phished when they're removed, and because on some domains the removal makes technical support for people like Joe harder. Similarly, the Web Audio complaints were not merely that the technical community wanted more control, it was that the changes broke the web for non-technical users in a way that commercially advantaged Google's own properties.

Secondly, Google's external PR has never taken this stance. Google invests a lot into interfacing with the dev community and positioning Chrome as a dev-friendly browser. I very much doubt that any Chrome dev on Twitter would agree with what you're saying. They would say that Chrome is trying to be a browser for both casual and advanced users.

As long as Google advertises Chrome that way, I don't see the problem with the technical community demanding a certain level of consideration. How many people on HN use Chrome (or at least did a week ago ;))? If Chrome isn't designed for people like them, than it seems like the obvious solution is for any tech savvy communities to en masse switch to Firefox and do the majority of their development/testing there.

But again, most of the changes that people are mad about aren't tech-specific concerns. I don't use Chrome for daily browsing; I'm mad that Google made a change that made it easier for them to spy on my parents. I'm responsible for protecting them. I'm responsible for mitigating Chrome's technical problems when they impact nontechnical users and customers that I care about.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#372

Post by icebraining »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #345
RossM wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

IMO syncing the state of your user account between devices is the responsibility of the OS, not the browser.

How would that work between my laptop and phone?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#373

Post by msiyer »

nadahalli wrote: post #313
TekMol wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gi…

It's possible that I want my passwords (of other sites) synced on all instances of Chrome across my devices, but I don't want Google to know these passwords (obviously). They have an "encrypt-passwords" feature for that. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139 Perhaps you have never visited passwords.google.com :-)

The link says:

> Passphrases are optional. Your synced data is always protected by encryption when it's in transit.

Data is protected when in transit and passphrase is optional. How is this a good feature?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#374

Post by x0re4x »

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…

Well, putting:

{ "SyncDisabled": true }

into /etc/chromium/policies/managed/test_policy.json (for debian linux) seems to do the trick for now, unsure how long it lasts...

see: https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#SyncDi...

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#375

Post by james_pm »

fermienrico wrote: post #110
spectrum1234 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree. However without ads, how do you expect poor people to have (free) access to radio, magazines (well, cheaper), antenna tv?

At this rate, the poor are better off without tv, radio and magazines. They’re largely just an entry portal into psychological extortion by these advertising firms. I’m a huge fan of publicly funded media such as NPR and your local public radio station.

The shows and movies and articles and websites often only exist to pull in people to view the ads. There's far to much content for the sake of content where the goal is not to inform or educate, but merely to wrap around the ads (or in a lot of cases, be the ad).

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#376

Post by bun_at_work »

eudora wrote: post #60
judge2020 wrote: post #18

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.

What data is it that Google collects without telling the user? Granted, they don't issue some pop-up notification or e-mail for every piece of data they collect, as the collect it, but every user has full access to all of the data points Google collects. They are highly transparent about the data they collect and even give users the option to delete that data from Google's records.

I could be mistaken, however, so I'm curious - what data does Google collect without telling the user, at least by making that data collection transparent?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#377

Post by kroltan »

evan_ wrote: post #367
KumarAseem wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the total population of the chrome users, how many really use more than 1 computer? These benefits may apply only for few users, probably in single percentage figures, which does not justify pushing it down the throats of everyone.

It’s pretty common for people to have a “work” computer and a “home” computer.

And that's probably one of the situations where you would precisely _not_ want synchronization. Now not only Google but your employer has access to your complete browsing history!

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#379

Post by yAnonymous »

>We appreciate your feedback

>We deeply appreciate all of the passionate users who have engaged with us on this

If only we could believe this. The last few Chrome updates have clearly shown that Google will undermine the users' privacy in the blink of an eye whenever they see fit.

When there's enough backlash, they will apologize in a cringy way and make some minor changes to appease to the community.

I had my reservations against Chrome, but changed to it anyway, because Firefox was in a bad state at the time. Now that is no longer the case and Vivaldi seems to be quite good, too.

Goodbye, Chrome.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#380

Post by emondi »

0x0 wrote: post #325
titel wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have most of your browsing history simply by having you logged into your Gmail and browsing the sites having Google Analytics installed (which is most of the sites on the internet these days).

Some of us don't use the gmail web interface (opting for IMAP or a different provider instead), and use an ad blocker to take of analytics.

I do the same but sometimes I get email from google telling that I should disable access to those unsafe apps.
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