Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

blog.lukaszolejnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 507 posts

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#271

Post by tinus_hn »

21 wrote: post #185
manigandham wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad example. In technical progress, Chrome is the complete opposite of IE (which seems to be replaced by Safari these days) and way better than the rest in pushing forward new features. Also 99% of the time Firefox and Edge work just fine. EDIT: Yes, IE was great in the beginning, but then it stagnated and earned the wide reputation of being terrible obsolete anchor that it is now known for. It's with this l…

I think you forget that in it's time IE was massively innovative. It was IE who added XMLHttpRequest and invented AJAX.

XMLHttpRequest was nice but hardly necessary, you could do same thing with frames. Just another little trick so Outlook Web Access would suck on the standards browsers. Oh, and of course it required ActiveX for no reason but to limit it to the Windows platform.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#272

Post by rifung »

reificator wrote: post #115
amdelamar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but my parents _understand_ Facebook collects/sells their data. But they don't _care_ enough to stop using Facebook.

They may understand it on a superficial level, but do they understand it on a practical one? Everyone "understands" that Facebook collects user data. It's the contextual understanding that makes techies uneasy.

I mean I'm a "techie" and I think I understand. I still don't care..

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#273

Post by wglb »

thrower123 wrote: post #82
noja wrote: post #23

Well if the EU wanted to make an example, Google just handed it to them.

Hopefully that battle comes sooner than later. Either the EU will fold, or we would get some real guidance about what honoring this GDPR legislation actually means. Clearly nobody has any frigging idea what is and is not in compliance.

Not true. I would say that Jacques has a pretty good idea, and expresses it pretty clearly for the rest of us in a four-part article: https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria/

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#274

Post by btilly »

sdegutis wrote: post #240
btilly wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did it by ironic accident. Bill Gates wanted their browser to be the best, but also wanted it not good enough to replace desktop apps. However the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. The Outlook team was told to make a web version. They got the IE team to add XMLHttpRequest for their use, everyone implemented what they needed to, then went home and forgot about it. Then Google recognized what th…

This origin story of XMLHttpRequest being an afterthought explains why the class name has inconsistent capitalization which interestingly enough I never noticed until now.

You can find verification of it in the various references provided in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12067185/why-is-it-calle.... In particular https://web.archive.org/web/20170424220609/http://www.alexho... is a snapshot of an explanation from the person who actually created the feature.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#275

Post by hysan »

tedivm wrote: post #3

I don't understand why the Chrome team is picking this hill to die on- their team (managers and developers) are all over twitter and reddit trying to explain the privacy violations away as if the people upset about this are just not understanding what's going on. I really expect this change to push a lot of people away from Chrome, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it started opening up more antitrust possibilit…

I’d like to do more in-depth research into this first, but my theory is that this move is innately tied to Google’s foray back into China.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#276

Post by RileyJames »

manigandham wrote: post #162

https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1044109898013765632 > My teammates made this change to prevent surprises in a shared device scenario. In the past, people would sometimes sign out of the content area and think that meant they were no longer signed into Chrome, which could cause problems on a shared device I can see why there is pushback against this, but the issue described above is also understandable. There are v…

If that’s the explanation, the solution is to logout the browser when the user logs out of a google service.

That would follow the users expectation (based on their observation).

Logging the user into the browser, on the other hand, is not directly related. And potentially unexpected for the user.

They could have had one without the other.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#277

Post by reificator »

rifung wrote: post #272
reificator wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may understand it on a superficial level, but do they understand it on a practical one? Everyone "understands" that Facebook collects user data. It's the contextual understanding that makes techies uneasy.

I mean I'm a "techie" and I think I understand. I still don't care..

Didn't say you had to...

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#278

Post by codethief »

mulmen wrote: post #132

Chrome has been the new IE for years. "just use chrome" is an endless refrain from webdevs who don't want to test on Firefox. Not sure why it is so hard for people to see what is going on here. Google has a massive conflict of interest with their web development efforts. This is classic Microsoft-esque Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

> "just use chrome" is an endless refrain from webdevs who don't want to test on Firefox

This. I get to hear this from my colleagues at work all the time.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#279

Post by Kim_Bruning »

adtac wrote: post #153
allenz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the tech-savvy community has influence. We set up computers for our friends and families. We write IT policies. We are web developers, tech reporters, and more. At least for me, Google's behavior means that I can no longer recommend Chrome.

I can't imagine the impact is significant even if we consider two degrees of acquaintances (you tell someone to not use Chrome and they tell someone else).

That would be very depressing if true.

Fortunately it's not. On average people are only about 6 degrees apart, so in reality a relatively small number of people can get a surprisingly large amount of coverage in a frighteningly short amount of time, should they choose to apply themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

Post reply on HN