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Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

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Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#441

Post by SquareWheel »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #437
SquareWheel wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overly dramatic. Both Chrome and Firefox are excellent browsers, and are developed in the open for all to see. They are examples of open source done right.

> Both Chrome and Firefox are excellent browsers, and are developed in the open for all to see. I still think you're misunderstanding. The problem is that Google as an organization has the incentive to pull shady shit. It may be noticed, but watching Reddit/HN to see if your browser, which should protect you/be trustworthy, is pulling shady stuff, or whether you may've missed a story of it doing so is still exhaustin…

All companies have the potential to do shady things. The majority of Google's changes to Chrome have benefited end-users, and not Hacker News goers. We live in a bubble here, and lately it's been an outrage bubble. There's little substance to any of it.

A recent example: Hackers hate the idea of removing "www". Why? Because it's less accurate and we love accuracy. We think about what happens to the DNS if the www isn't a CNAME for the root, and how this isn't technically accurate.

Real users don't care. The UI is cleaner and make important information like what domain they're actually on more pronounced. This may help reduce phishing attacks and make URLs more legible.

Integrating sync is the same way. I'm not surprised that hackers hate it, but end users will appreciate the convenience. Android had the feature for years already.

We need to get out of this bubble and stop assuming we're the core audience. It isn't evil to design for somebody that isn't us.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#442

Post by School-Cotton »

walterbell wrote: post #414
School-Cotton wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s just a vocabulary quirk — to me, “shelved” implies “postponed indefinitely, but might come back someday”, not “cancelled forever”. So it is “shelved” according to how I understand that word. As you correctly point out, it’s not necessarily cancelled forever.

Launching in M71 (i.e. delayed by a single release) would remain consistent with the Google statement. The statement applies to any delay within the range of "soon" and "not forever".

Yes, I agree with you. What was unclear about my comment?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#443

Post by grey-area »

wbl wrote: post #321
grey-area wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you expect them to announce a change they probably perceive as a minor UX improvement? Just because you split a large change into a set of minor UX improvements and have different excuses for each individual change, that doesn't make the direction of travel any less damaging. To be clear, the direction of travel is for Google to abuse their de-facto monopoly on search and browsers to own SSO across the web an…

The competition to their products is a click away. People use google products because they find them more useful. If that's a result of the data they have, who cares?

People use google products because they find them more useful

No - because they are free, ubiquitous, and often installed by default. People choose their browser as they would choose a hat, from the limited selection available.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#444

Post by dredmorbius »

maxerickson wrote: post #384
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…

What if other people do want it?

Beware the The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#445

Post by dredmorbius »

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 exceptionally useful to put an unbreachable firewall between work and personal devices.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#446

Post by dredmorbius »

cm2187 wrote: post #301
grey-area wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think something is good for people Therein lies the disagreement - Google thinks it is good for people to log in to Google services via their browser, and to always be logged in (it's certainly good for Google!), therefore they choose these defaults, opting in to login and to tracking. Many disagree.

Like Apple thinks it's "good for people" to have a 40% markup on their product...

If you want to participate in a debate or discussion, then ddo so. Whataboutism, deflection, projection, etc., are not that.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#447

Post by dredmorbius »

joshuamorton wrote: post #413
cm2187 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that the user doesn’t care. I don’t want to have to monitor constantly hackernews to find out what new invasion of privacy google will sneak in discretely, even if there is a switch somewhere to opt out. I want to be able to rely on the tools I use.

The issue with this line of thinking is that this change isn't really a privacy invasion. Account consistency didn't at all affect privacy. You still had to opt in to syncing, which did affect privacy.

It is difficult for me to assess the validity of this statement. I cannot tell if the behaviour is or is not a privacy invasion. What I can tell is that it is not in the direction of greater privacy. That it is not a feature I'd requested, want, or am comfortable with. And it's in line with multiple past trust violations.

That Google are announcing walking this back within days of release and publicity suggests some measure of the storms roiling the 'Plex presently.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#448

Post by feanaro »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #209
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.

> This would be clear evidence of what a stupid idea it is to match browser sign-in state to your cookies.

It must certainly is a stupid idea.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#449

Post by joshuamorton »

dredmorbius wrote: post #447
joshuamorton wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with this line of thinking is that this change isn't really a privacy invasion. Account consistency didn't at all affect privacy. You still had to opt in to syncing, which did affect privacy.

It is difficult for me to assess the validity of this statement. I cannot tell if the behaviour is or is not a privacy invasion. What I can tell is that it is not in the direction of greater privacy. That it is not a feature I'd requested, want, or am comfortable with. And it's in line with multiple past trust violations. That Google are announcing walking this back within days of release and publicity suggests some…

>What I can tell is that it is not in the direction of greater privacy

For you, it may be a no-op, but for many users, it is a net increase in privacy (people who use multiple accounts or who use accounts on shared computers).

>That Google are announcing walking this back

Erm, sort of, I guess. There are some small changes.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#450

Post by maxerickson »

dredmorbius wrote: post #444
maxerickson wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if other people do want it?

Beware the The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

Hilariously, that WOT doesn't address my point.

Here's one way: there's not a singular axis that users wanting sync and users not wanting sync can be placed on and compared.

The other poster expressed how the feature sucked for their purposes. But the feature wasn't made to punish them, it was made after evaluating the preferences of many users, which is what my question is getting at.

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