Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar • Hacker News Board

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#731

Post by wizzwizz4 » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

ekimekim wrote: post #464

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Edge came out, I always preferred IE11 over Chrome (on machines that only had those two installed), because IE11 kept the legacy "must compete with Netscape" features like decent contentEditable context menus. And websites that didn't work in IE11 generally weren't worth using anyway. Now… well, IE11 doesn't even support ES6 properly, and good sites have started relying on that, and Edge is just evil Chrome –…

> Zoom needs either Chrome or a malwarey desktop program ...and the malwarey desktop program is also Chrome.

The backdoor part isn't Chrome, though, is it? (If it's a Node.js script bundled with yet another copy of V8, I'll scream.)

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#732

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

feanaro wrote: post #729

shadowgovt wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) It's not a large part of the user base who switches off telemetry and they have the telemetry to know that b) for being "not a good idea", it's pretty much industry standard now for everything from business software to video games.

> a) It's not a large part of the user base who switches off telemetry and they have the telemetry to know that So you're claiming that it is typical for software with telemetry support to ignore your choice and still send telemetry about you turning off telemetry? That sounds wrong, but I cannot say I investigated this deeply. > b) for being "not a good idea", it's pretty much industry standard now for everything fr…

> So you're claiming that it is typical for software with telemetry support to ignore your choice and still send telemetry about you turning off telemetry? That sounds wrong, but I cannot say I investigated this deeply.

No; I'm saying missing data leaves holes that can be measured. They know, for example, how many people have downloaded Chrome and how many daily Chrome users they get at google.com (because Chrome will still send a valid UA string if it has telemetry turned off). They can estimate how many users have telemetry turned off from those signals to a pretty decent degree of accuracy; certainly enough to know whether telemetry is telling them about 90% of users of 30%.

For (b), I'm curious what software you use. It's pretty standard in games, online apps, and business software. It's absent in a lot of open-source (mostly because a lot of open-source lacks a centralized vendor who would be willing to pay the cost to collect and interpret that data to improve the software).

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#733

Post by feanaro » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #732

feanaro wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a) It's not a large part of the user base who switches off telemetry and they have the telemetry to know that So you're claiming that it is typical for software with telemetry support to ignore your choice and still send telemetry about you turning off telemetry? That sounds wrong, but I cannot say I investigated this deeply. > b) for being "not a good idea", it's pretty much industry standard now for everything fr…

> So you're claiming that it is typical for software with telemetry support to ignore your choice and still send telemetry about you turning off telemetry? That sounds wrong, but I cannot say I investigated this deeply. No; I'm saying missing data leaves holes that can be measured. They know, for example, how many people have downloaded Chrome and how many daily Chrome users they get at google.com (because Chrome wil…

Is Chrome's telemetry so invasive that it reports about all URLs visited? Otherwise I don't see how daily Chrome visitors on google.com would be helpful in this estimate.

I avoid online apps, I don't play a lot of games (and if I do, they're not big titles which are likely to have telemetry) and yes, I primarily use FOSS.

> (mostly because a lot of open-source lacks a centralized vendor who would be willing to pay the cost to collect and interpret that data to improve the software).

This is almost surely an element of it, but I think a respect for privacy and a general distaste for telemetry among FOSS users are more important.