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Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

lapcatsoftware.com

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Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#181

Post by beerandt »

da_chicken wrote: post #28
beerandt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired of this excuse. If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment.

> Tired of this excuse. When it stops being true, it will stop being trotted out as the explanation for why Google keeps making their browser better for their ad revenue business. > If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment. Why do you think the most tech savvy segment is the target audie…

>Why do you think the most tech savvy segment is the target audience?

Tech savvy doesn't equal hn users.

You think teenagers and college kids aren't using ad blockers or selectively clearing browser history?

There are tech savvy users across all marketing demographics.

>When it stops being true, it will stop being trotted out as the explanation

It's not really an explanation, though. It's a half-baked observation.

Movie theaters make money on concessions, but need the good movies to draw a crowd.

Dealerships make their money on service, but still need to sell cars to get that customer base.

Even if it's true by some skewed definition, it's mostly irrelevant.

It implies that it doesn't matter what they do to users, and have no interest in keeping them satisfied, and that's false. They might want to increase ad business, but that don't do that by allowing users to slowly trickle to alternatives. Look at firefox's fall from the top. There wasn't a breaking point, but a constant trickle due to usability and performance.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#182

Post by kenhwang »

yborg wrote: post #151
deathanatos wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use & love Firefox, too, but do note that the author's criticism directly applies to it, too: AFAIK, FF will not show you the individualized cookies, or all you to act on them individually. Now, as you say, you can download an extension (and indeed, I do!), but I think there is some merit to it being in the base app. (E.g., not having to trust an extension. But also, it's part of Firefox 's data, and FF should prov…

Firefox used to show individual site cookies in the Manage Data dialog, this was removed at some point.

I'm running the latest developer build and it still has this. It only shows number of cookies by domain and allows deletion by domain, and you'd have to use dev tools if you wanted to look at or delete a single individual cookie.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#184

Post by SquareWheel »

IIsi50MHz wrote: post #178
shock-value wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason was probably that no one ever needs to delete just a subset of cookies from a site. I certainly never have, and I'm a pretty technically-minded user. (Other than for development, in which case I'm using dev tools anyway.)

Counterpoint: I've many times had to fix presentation of or access to a site by purging just specific cookies. Two sites that have previously had these problems are RingCentral's web interface and AutoTask. Maybe a dozen or more others, but admittedly not many…however, when I've needed it, the problem has been persistent, requiring multiple fixes per day, over a few consecutive days or or even a couple weeks.

Needing to delete specific cookies does arise occasionally, and we have dev tools or the cookie viewer under the lock for that.

However, needing to delete those cookies without first viewing the page due to side effects - that is a very niche use case.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#185

Post by beerandt »

brezelgoring wrote: post #35
beerandt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired of this excuse. If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment.

"Tech savvy" and "not tech savvy" are just 2 of hundreds if not thousands of tags put in your info, to steer it into the proper SALE buckets. The 'you are the product' adage is true, but there isn't a single quality you can have that makes you stand out from thousands if not millions of others. Advertising is a numbers game for them.

Yeah, but there's an interest in keeping those numbers around, and they have a disproportionate influence.

Who does grandma or cousin Bob call to "fix" their computer? Who's controlling what browsers get installed on corporate networks and at elementary schools? Or picking the online class systems (and compatible browsers) at universities?

They run off more than the one segment they piss off.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#186

Post by acabal »

deathanatos wrote: post #93
SLWW wrote: post #52

Firefox Nightly is a pretty good browser imho Also it just so happens that there are extensions that allow you detailed (read: raw and editable) cookie data for each website you visit!

I use & love Firefox, too, but do note that the author's criticism directly applies to it, too: AFAIK, FF will not show you the individualized cookies, or all you to act on them individually. Now, as you say, you can download an extension (and indeed, I do!), but I think there is some merit to it being in the base app. (E.g., not having to trust an extension. But also, it's part of Firefox 's data, and FF should prov…

That data is available in the developer tools, under the Storage tab. Individual cookies can be viewed, edited, and deleted. Not very useful for the average user, but the option is there and I doubt the average user even knows what cookies are, except that they're something you constantly have to click "yes" to nowadays.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#187

Post by tyingq »

renewiltord wrote: post #177
tyingq wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could clear "all cookies for all sites", but that tends to piss customers off, as pre-filled fields for many websites are no longer pre-filled. If I remember right, clearing it for one site didn't help because clearing "login.paypal.com" cookies didn't clear "some-other-thing.paypal.com" or "www.paypal.com". They seem to use www.paypal.com for everything now. Google for: "paypal Your browser sent a request that t…

I googled for those and it's funny but sadly not as entertaining as I'd hoped. All the responses involve clearing all cookies for paypal.com at al. > If I remember right, clearing it for one site didn't help because clearing "login.paypal.com" cookies didn't clear "some-other-thing.paypal.com" or "www.paypal.com". They seem to use www.paypal.com for everything now. Right, but that's not a problem that this particular…

Ah, got it. I read the screenshots as the "search" was also going away. I do have that 'single cookie' thing with another service where I have to delete one called TICKET_something, but I'll fumble through it I suppose, or use an extension.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#188

Post by jychang »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #107
foota wrote: post #82

I don't get why people think this is a move with some agenda, most likely they just don't think enough people use the single cookie deletion functionality to warrant having it in the settings vs the dev tools.

The hyperbole in this thread is insane. I would wager that none of the furious "this is pure evil!" commenters in this thread even knew this particular settings page existed before today (and I'd bet they still don't know the information is already exposed in the URL bar). Nobody who isn't a web developer is out there trying to guess what individual cookie names/values mean or wants to delete individual ones. At most…

Deleting cookies for a group of sites is essential, though, and they're removing that.

Think facebook.com, fbcdn.net, etc.

I end up having to delete cookies for Cars.com every other week, because sometimes the search function would corrupt something and every page would return a blank white screen.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#189

Post by feanaro »

codezero wrote: post #73
samizdis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also navigate to the site in the browser and then view the detailed data The author addresses this point (or has now addressed it) in the addendum to point out an "observer effect" shortcoming: This information can be seen with the web inspector in both Chrome and Safari. Yes, but the crucial difference is that you have to navigate to an individual site in a browser window in order to see the site data in t…

Not trying to defend anyone here, but I wonder if there's a non-nefarious reason for this. Specifically, there have been a lot of changes to cookies lately because malicious actors (malware/adware) figured out how to access the cookie store and infer/determine cookie information from other sites. I suspect that maybe this cookie store is kept in a more secure part of the application and only the cookies relevant to t…

Let's remain serious. It is entirely within the capability of modern computers to admit a dialogue which would let the user view their cookies without magically exposing them to websites. There is no non-nefarious reason for this.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#190

Post by feanaro »

foota wrote: post #82

I don't get why people think this is a move with some agenda, most likely they just don't think enough people use the single cookie deletion functionality to warrant having it in the settings vs the dev tools.

lol. Because it's such an unimaginable hassle having to keep this code lying around in the codebase.
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