Enterprise environments don't click on ads, so they don't matter to Google. Enterprise IT management should realize this.
Thanks, this is the kind of insightful comments I come to HN for.
Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
21–30 of 109 posts
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#22I've been dealing with this bug for the last couple of days and it's been hugely frustrating.
This was not a new version of Chrome or a software update. None of our software was updated at all (and we spent a long time checking!). But apparently Google have an ability to change a setting and globally affect the behaviour of all Chrome browsers by enabling experimental features.
We carefully manage our software updates and patching so that we can test it and roll back if it impacts the business. Google had been good at understanding "enterprise" requirements - disabling automatic updates, setting policies etc. But this shows that they're really focused on consumers and business users will always be an afterthought.
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#23>Many didn't know that Chrome engineers could run experiments on their tightly-controlled Chrome installations, let alone that Google engineers could just ship changes to everyone's browsers without any prior approval. Uhm, isn't that the entire auto-update feature, that google ships changes without you even being aware?
This change didn't come from a binary update.
We were affected and our version hadn't changed (in fact we weren't quite on the latest version - we were still testing it). We have updates disabled and are very much aware of how to manage this.
Google changed a feature flag that was automatically picked up by existing copies of Chrome and changed their behaviour.
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#24This is the trouble with Google's aggressive auto-update policy. "Everyone is always on the latest" is mandated because everyone should have the latest security updates, but it works great except when it doesn't. Another example is a recent issue where a Chrome update broke WebView based Android apps and stopped them from being able to make certain types of network requests. It was fixed in 2 weeks, but that 2 week p…
Couldn’t one setup to use Chrome Enterprise with group plolicy rules on when certain updates can happen?
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The experiments released to the general public should be stable. Unstable experiments are released in their canary builds.
Article said they already ran it in beta and even experimented in stable! >"The experiment/flag has been on in beta for ~5 months," said David Bienvenu, a Google Chrome engineer. "It was turned on for stable (e.g., M77, M78) via an experiment that was pushed to released Chrome Tuesday morning." >"Prior to that, it had been on for about 1% of M77 and M78 users for a month with no reports of issues, unfortunately," he…
This indicates a flaw in their testing strategy.
The bug affected Citrix-style environments, where perhaps 10-20 users are running Chrome on the same machine. If 1% of users are running the experiment the chance of two of those 10 users running the experiment is tiny, and when they experience the bug it's unlikely to get reported back to Google.
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#26With Edge being based on Chromium I expect many corporations will start switching away from Google Chrome, but it's just swapping one corporate overlord for another.
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#27>Many didn't know that Chrome engineers could run experiments on their tightly-controlled Chrome installations, let alone that Google engineers could just ship changes to everyone's browsers without any prior approval. Uhm, isn't that the entire auto-update feature, that google ships changes without you even being aware?
This change didn't come from a binary update. We were affected and our version hadn't changed (in fact we weren't quite on the latest version - we were still testing it). We have updates disabled and are very much aware of how to manage this. Google changed a feature flag that was automatically picked up by existing copies of Chrome and changed their behaviour.
Whoa, that wasn't clear in the article. Thanks for enlightening me!
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#28>Many didn't know that Chrome engineers could run experiments on their tightly-controlled Chrome installations, let alone that Google engineers could just ship changes to everyone's browsers without any prior approval. Uhm, isn't that the entire auto-update feature, that google ships changes without you even being aware?
My interpretation of the below quote from the article is that Google enabled the feature through pushing a configuration change to active clients. So if I'm a sysadmin and have done my due diligence and successfully tested the new build (with my configuration) before deploying it, I would be very unhappy if/when Google decides to turn this on without my consent or knowledge. Ref. quote from article: "Chrome engineers…
Thanks, I didn't grok that was something different than the auto-update that I'm used to seeing.
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#29This is the trouble with Google's aggressive auto-update policy. "Everyone is always on the latest" is mandated because everyone should have the latest security updates, but it works great except when it doesn't. Another example is a recent issue where a Chrome update broke WebView based Android apps and stopped them from being able to make certain types of network requests. It was fixed in 2 weeks, but that 2 week p…
This is not about auto-updates. Organizations which had disabled auto-updates were still affected. In this case Google changed Chrome behavior without changing the release version. That’s absolutely unacceptable.
Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide
#30I chuckled at this:
> "Do you see the impact you created for thousands of us without any warning or explanation? We are not your test subjects," said an angry sysadmin. "We are running professional services for multi million dollar programs. Do you understand how many hours of resources were wasted by your 'experiment'?"
Did you, dear sysadmin, pay anything for Google Chrome? No? Are you in any contractual relation to Google that covers your use of Chrome? No? Well, there you have it. You are not a customer, hence you aren't really in any position to demand anything. You basically agreed to take whatever Google shoves down your throat for free, and if that includes "experiments", then that's what it is.
If your multi-million dollar programs move so much money around, maybe take some of that to either invest in the necessary software - including the browser - so you are a paying customer and may actually demand anything, or pay some people to be up to date on the intricacies of Google Chrome and test them under your environment or disable them if undesired. The experiments are not exactly a secret program and have existed for a while. Firefox has a similar thing going. The Firefox one can definitely be disabled. The Chrome one unfortunately not (at least I don't know of a way at the moment, there might be one, maybe it's also only available for the Enterprise subscription that I have never personally heard of any business to be using, but for which money is actually paid, hence there might be leverage in that case to force Google to offer an opt-out).
Or ultimately you could also just compile yourself a Chromium from scratch and update it regularly. I've done it, it's not that hard, and that gets you the ultimate level of control over that nice free piece of software that you depend your business upon.