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Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

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Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#461

Post by dredmorbius »

maxerickson wrote: post #450
dredmorbius wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Features can introduce risks in various ways. I discovered this long ago through a software vendor's annual feature request solicitation, in which I learned to be ware of what others ask for: you may get it.

Specifically as to sync: I would love to be able to sync certain elements of browser state between my systems.

Not between one of my systems, some arbitrary third party of questionable trust and intentions, and another of my systems. But directly between my systems.

Google actively thwart this.

A feature of most early browsers was the ability to save bookmarks to a file, and import that elsewhere. By slight extension, a browser session or tab state can be saved, either directly, or as bookmarks.

Chrome does not do this, either at all, or on all platforms. It's most resistant to this on the consumption-only platform of Android.

This has been a major point of frustration to me for a year and a half as I've been wanting to dump user state from one system to another, without Google intermediating that exchange for me. I've found no means of accomplishing this.

That is one element of the tyranny of the minimum viable user, as well as of Google cattle-prodding its users into the feed chutes.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#463

Post by SquareWheel »

hajderr wrote: post #457
SquareWheel wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wanted a company that doesn't sell your information. It would take five minutes to read their privacy policy to confirm this for yourself. Much easier than switching providers.

Ok, let me rephrase that: they monetise on my personal data and online behaviour. Selling the data would mean losing their unique position. Btw, interesting article currently top voted at HN about ex-google employee ;)

>they monetise on my personal data and online behaviour.

Indeed they do. Personally I prefer this to having to pay a monthly fee, but others may disagree (and quality paid services do exist for them).

>Selling the data would mean losing their unique position.

That's right too. User data is their biggest asset versus their competitors.

>Btw, interesting article currently top voted at HN about ex-google employee ;)

Haven't caught it yet. If it's regarding their recent China play however, then that story concerns me too.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#464

Post by tome »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #332
tome wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven’t used Firefox seriously in 5 years Do you mean "I haven't used *Chrome" ..."? Otherwise I don't understand what you're trying to say.

They used Chrome previously and now they switched to Firefox and are happy with it, despite not having used it seriously in 5 years.

Ah, so maybe the meaning was "I've just switched to Firefox after having not used it seriously for five years". It's interesting that that interpretation was so obvious to so many people but not me!

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#465

Post by clear_dg »

ux-app wrote: post #458
clear_dg wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the HN backlash is anything to go by, a lot of people see it the same way as you (me included). HN isn't representative of most users of Chrome. I doubt that we qualify as "a lot" to Google. An extremely vocal minority, at best.

you're a techie i'm guessing? How many of your friends/family ask for tech support/advice? There's a serious multiplier effect at work. I'm a high school IT teacher. I influence approx 600 students per year. We now cover online privacy and I will be setting assignments that ask students to investigate and make reasoned arguments about the impact of Google's dominance on their privacy. Once you annoy enough of the tec…

I won't deny that the tech crowd can influence things, but it's become quite hard for regular users to quit the whole Google panoply of services and tech products. Mail, browser, maps, dns, search, etc... It isn't painless and easy to abandon all of this and I have doubts even tech-savvy influencers can counter it at this point, only by word of mouth.

And about how Chrome got a foothold in the first place, I distinctly remember Google agressively advertising their own product on their search engine page, and bundling the binary with everything under the sun (Adobe Reader, anti-virus, etc...). Every time you installed software, there was a good chance Chrome was included with it. Tech influencers had their part in the success of Chrome, but it definitely wasn't the only factor, or maybe even the most important one.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#466

Post by exatto »

msiyer wrote: post #373
nadahalli wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The difference is whether or not Google can see your passwords.

When you use a passphrase, your data will presumably be encrypted with your passphrase and thus only be visible to you with knowledge of the passphrase. Not even Google could see the data while it would be stored on their servers.

Encryption during transit means that no bad actors like hackers, unscrupulous ISP's or overzealous governments can access your data _while_ it travels over the wires towards Google's servers but Google can still do what it wants with your data.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#467

Post by ThePhysicist »

joshuamorton wrote: post #452
ThePhysicist wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about storage it's about tracking. If Chrome syncs your web-based login cookie with your Chrome authentication it means they will associate the data your browser generates with your user account. I don't know what they collect there but I assume it's something, as otherwise why bother to log someone in?

Why does it mean that? It certainly means that it's possible, but of course it was potentially possible before, and the code is, afaik, open source, so you're free to look and see if they really are. As for non-tracking reasons why this change: it improves the us for users who use multiple accounts or share accounts on a single system. Sometimes things are just because they want a more useful product.

Maybe, it doesn't change the fact that it's not privacy by default, because that would require having the user explicitly opt in to the syncing of the two sessions. That has nothing to do with wether they actually collect or transmit any data.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#468

Post by joshuamorton »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #467
joshuamorton wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it mean that? It certainly means that it's possible, but of course it was potentially possible before, and the code is, afaik, open source, so you're free to look and see if they really are. As for non-tracking reasons why this change: it improves the us for users who use multiple accounts or share accounts on a single system. Sometimes things are just because they want a more useful product.

Maybe, it doesn't change the fact that it's not privacy by default, because that would require having the user explicitly opt in to the syncing of the two sessions. That has nothing to do with wether they actually collect or transmit any data.

>Maybe, it doesn't change the fact that it's not privacy by default

Why? If this change doesn't impact privacy, why is having it opt out not privacy by default? How is a no-op from a privacy perspective privacy-anything?

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#470

Post by babuskov »

jee1shi wrote: post #271
babuskov wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compare: the organ-donor registry. When it's opt-in, most people don't opt in. When it's opt-out, most people don't opt out. Most people just don't care. Most people don't know it exists or that they have an option. You cannot care about something if you don't know it's there.

> Most people don't know it exists or that they have an option. You cannot care about something if you don't know it's there. Most people won't know that these chrome features exist. Most people don't go digging through options and settings, they just download chrome and go, go, go.

Exactly. Same as the organ donor thing. They don't KNOW. If they knew they would CARE.
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