6 ms·

Shock and Denial is the first stage in the 7 stages of grief. The chrome team is clearly in the wrong here, and it will take some time for them to realize that

by pg_bot 8y ago

Shock and Denial is the first stage in the 7 stages of grief. The chrome team is clearly in the wrong here, and it will take some time for them to realize that they screwed up and that they need to fix it.

joshuamorton 8y ago
I also work at Google though have nothing to do with Chrome. This isn't "clear" to me. There are certainly complaints about this change within HN, but there are also people here saying that they appreciate the change, or that they're ambivalent. But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change, that's less than 1% of 1% of Chrome's user base. If this change makes the browser better (using whatever metric you want, I'd argue the correct one here is privacy), even marginally, for the average user, at the cost of a few people believing that the browser is behaving badly, that seems like an overall good change, doesn't it? And that seems to be what the Chrome team is arguing, that while some "abnormal" users might see this as an attack on privacy, it isn't, and it's a privacy increase for the uninformed user. I think I've seen exactly one potentially compelling argument, which is that it may now be easier to accidentally enable syncing when you don't want to, since its a single click instead of entering a password. That might be true, although I'm not 100% certain, since I've logged into the wrong chrome window before, and that would have enabled syncing in a previous world.
- thinkingemote 8y ago
  The argument that resonates with me is how Chrome is breaking the barrier between the web and the browser, and that this barrier should be important. It's morphing from a multi purpose web browser into a Google centric application (e.g. ChromeOS).
- allenz 8y ago
  What's the point of signing in at all for users who don't use sync?
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    (if my understanding is correct) Consider the case of two users, Alice and Bob. Alice has sync enabled, Bob does not. Bob wants to check his email on Alice's computer, so he logs Alice off and logs into to his account. This syncs across all website he visits (due to shared auth cookies), but doesn't sync to the browser itself. Chrome is still logged into Alice's account, so Bob's browsing history is synced, but to Alice's history. This can have any number of unwanted consequences, from privacy consequences to Bob depending on whether or not you think Alice or Google are bad/compromised, to weirdnesses for Alice when she tries to check her history again. Post this change, Bob logging in to Gmail on Alice's computer will log out of Alice on Chrome, and log in to Bob, meaning that Bob's history is no longer synced. So for Bob, this is a privacy increase (since now Google and Alice have less access to his browsing history) in that situation, and a usability improvement for Alice. You could maybe get a similar effect by having account consistency be a thing that always logs the current user out and only also logs you in if you opt in, but that can also I think lead to weird situations for everyday users. In other words, the point of signing in is to make sure no one else can accidentally (or intentionally) siphon away your browsing history.
    - tedivm 8y ago
      If Bob logs into Alice's computer and forgets to log out all she has to do is hit the "sync" button and she can now view everything that's his synced with his account. Previously she would have at most his email, now she has that and more. To me that seems like a decrease in privacy.
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        I don't want to get too far into specifics because I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure there are a number of inaccuracies in this comment. Notably, synced data would have been visible in myaccount.google.com already, and if he had syncing disabled, I don't think there wouldn't be any data synced with his account to view. In other words, assuming Alice was nefarious, yes this is still terrible, but I don't think it's just still terrible, not worse terrible. Edit: I'm rate limited, but to clarify, yes syncing is an account wide setting, hence you need to be authenticated to a specific account to change it. The entire point of syncing is to sync data between browsers on different devices.
- pvorb 8y ago
  You confuse privacy with security. Also, Google is abusing its market power here, even if the change might be in favor of Chrome's users.
- seqizz 8y ago
  Wait, could a change be "better" if a (somewhat) random example group of 10k users are agreed the change is bad. I am sorry but "abnormal users" is just funny. Who is "normal" and cares about privacy?
- pg_bot 8y ago
  Perhaps I can clarify why this was a terrible decision. As written this feature enables special privileges unavailable to other website developers via a direct integration with the browser. Imagine if some other company automatically added a feature directly to your browser without your consent. You would be rightfully angry if there was a yahoo/facebook/microsoft widget that you didn't approve being added to your toolbar. What's stopping the chrome team from adding more features to blur the line between the browser and google services? There are boundaries between websites, browsers, and users that should not be violated. This is nothing more than google putting their thumb on the scale to unfairly influence user behavior in their interest.
- tedivm 8y ago
  This is some real Orwellian stuff here. First off, since it applies to people logged out of Chrome and it forces them to log in it increases, not decreases, the chances of someone accidentally leaving their account available to others on the machine. Since the sync button no longer requires a password this means someone can log in at a library to check their email, walk away, and someone else can step up, hit the sync button, and steal all of their information. They've just made people less secure, not more. But lets take your argument and assume it's right. You could apply the same logic to every website on the internet- Amazon, people's bank accounts, phone companies, etc. Google is therefore abusing their status as the browser developer to give themselves special functionality that other websites can't give. This should open them up to a variety of antitrust actions (particularly in the EU). At the end of the day this could have been done by letting people opt-in to the login. Add a button on the google login sites that say "log into browser as well" and let the people who want it click it.
  - starshadowx2 8y ago
    Just anecdotally since I used to manage the computers at a public library, we did have time software that would reset the computers back to a clean state after they either were done and clicked "end session" or they left it unattended for a minute. I'm still against this Chrome change for the same reasons, but I would hope other libraries do the same thing as we did. From my experience library tech people are usually really privacy focused.
    - codethief 8y ago
      > but I would hope other libraries do the same thing as we did In my experience, 9 out of 10 libraries, copy shops and internet cafés don't do this [properly].
      - starshadowx2 8y ago
        I wouldn't expect copy shops or internet cafes to do so as they're private/profit focused entities, and I definitely wouldn't lump libraries in with them. As a public entity we had a mandate to protect user information and make sure it wasn't stored by us or accessible by others. This applied across the organisation from what books someone checked out to what websites they visited. Maybe this was just more of a thing in Canada or even Alberta but the concept was definitely agreed upon with other libraries and people in the system I was in contact with. I have read other articles and such from American libraries about protecting information so I assumed it was more widespread.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  > If this change makes the browser better (using whatever metric you want, I'd argue the correct one here is privacy), How does automatically signing me into Chrome improve my privacy?
- btilly 8y ago
  How is sending my personal passwords to a server under Google's control an increase in my privacy? More importantly, doing so without users clearly knowing and consenting to it is a clear violation of GDPR. This is an absolute, not a relative standard. Which means that it doesn't matter how it compares to what things were like before. This for Google could be up to a $2 billion fine. 2% of worldwide annual revenue - annual revenue is around $100 billion. It would only take 13 fines per year of that size to reduce Google to not being profitable. So you shouldn't think about it as a question of opinions about UI design. Instead think about it as a question of liability. Do you as an employee want the people working on Chrome to be subjecting your employer to this kind of legal risk?
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    >How is sending my personal passwords to a server under Google's control an increase in my privacy? If this change did that, I might be inclined to agree with you. But as far as I know, it doesn't. You still have to explicitly opt in to syncing. Which is a no-op compared to the old behavior.
    - btilly 8y ago
      Look in the OP for the phrase "Mistaken synchronisation". You'll land at a section where he verified the steps by which a confused user could easily turn on synchronization without understanding that they had done so. Does this change your opinion?
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        Note that I explicitly mentioned this as the one consideration that was mildly convincing: >I think I've seen exactly one potentially compelling argument, which is that it may now be easier to accidentally enable syncing when you don't want to, since its a single click instead of entering a password. Personally, though, (and I want to highlight that this is just my opinion as a person) I don't think it's a regression. But I can understand why others might disagree. From what I've read, the old behavior was that logging in enabled syncing by default. So accidentally logging in would immediately sync things. I've certainly made the mistake of logging into the wrong account in the wrong chrome window, so I could absolutely see a user making the same mistake previously. But even if you disagree, I think "you can synchronize by mistake, so they should add a confirmation dialogue" (which is a change I would support!) puts this firmly into the realm of imperfect UX and not an attack on privacy that should be totally rolled back. And the aggravating (and potentially harmful) thing is that we can't even approach the discussion of "should we add a confirmation box", which would address the UX issue, if the accusation is that it's an attack on privacy. First we have to have this long tiring discussion where people throw around words like "Orwellian" and "GDPR" and we get to the reality that people are complaining about a whole host of not-really-harmful things, and that the one actually-maybe-harmful thing is a confirmation dialogue.
- 0x54D5 8y ago
  Let's just say that I don't want my porn throwaway gmail account to have anything to do with my personal or work accounts. Ya'll fucked up big time. I uninstalled Chrome off all my computers today.
- simion314 8y ago
  You could have just ask for permissions for this new feature,what next switch the default browser or scan my files because it is better in some metric for some majority of users?
- jlarocco 8y ago
  > But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change, that's less than 1% of 1% of Chrome's user base. If this change makes the browser better (using whatever metric you want, I'd argue the correct one here is privacy), even marginally, for the average user, at the cost of a few people believing that the browser is behaving badly, that seems like an overall good change, doesn't it? Well what percentage of those billion users understands what's going on, versus the 10000 users here? Google's business model does depend on duping people who don't know any better, so maybe this isn't so surprising.. In any case, I don't think there'd be so much uproar if Google hadn't snuck the change in without telling anybody. There are release notes, why not use them? Why is that so hard to understand for a company that prides itself on hiring the best and brightest?
pvorb 8y ago
I think it's unlikely that the Chrome team will revert their decision. This will annoy people for a few days or even weeks, but people will eventually accept it. That's just how you make unpopular changes these days. Maybe the EU will do something about it, but this will take years.
- nazri1 8y ago
  Not unlike systemd, not too long ago...

by pg_bot 8y ago

joshuamorton 8y ago

I also work at Google though have nothing to do with Chrome. This isn't "clear" to me. There are certainly complaints about this change within HN, but there are also people here saying that they appreciate the change, or that they're ambivalent. But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change, that's less than 1% of 1% of Chrome's user base. If this change makes the browser better (using whatever metric you want, I'd argue the correct one here is privacy), even marginally, for the average user, at the cost of a few people believing that the browser is behaving badly, that seems like an overall good change, doesn't it? And that seems to be what the Chrome team is arguing, that while some "abnormal" users might see this as an attack on privacy, it isn't, and it's a privacy increase for the uninformed user. I think I've seen exactly one potentially compelling argument, which is that it may now be easier to accidentally enable syncing when you don't want to, since its a single click instead of entering a password. That might be true, although I'm not 100% certain, since I've logged into the wrong chrome window before, and that would have enabled syncing in a previous world.

thinkingemote 8y ago
The argument that resonates with me is how Chrome is breaking the barrier between the web and the browser, and that this barrier should be important. It's morphing from a multi purpose web browser into a Google centric application (e.g. ChromeOS).
allenz 8y ago
What's the point of signing in at all for users who don't use sync?
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  (if my understanding is correct) Consider the case of two users, Alice and Bob. Alice has sync enabled, Bob does not. Bob wants to check his email on Alice's computer, so he logs Alice off and logs into to his account. This syncs across all website he visits (due to shared auth cookies), but doesn't sync to the browser itself. Chrome is still logged into Alice's account, so Bob's browsing history is synced, but to Alice's history. This can have any number of unwanted consequences, from privacy consequences to Bob depending on whether or not you think Alice or Google are bad/compromised, to weirdnesses for Alice when she tries to check her history again. Post this change, Bob logging in to Gmail on Alice's computer will log out of Alice on Chrome, and log in to Bob, meaning that Bob's history is no longer synced. So for Bob, this is a privacy increase (since now Google and Alice have less access to his browsing history) in that situation, and a usability improvement for Alice. You could maybe get a similar effect by having account consistency be a thing that always logs the current user out and only also logs you in if you opt in, but that can also I think lead to weird situations for everyday users. In other words, the point of signing in is to make sure no one else can accidentally (or intentionally) siphon away your browsing history.
  - tedivm 8y ago
    If Bob logs into Alice's computer and forgets to log out all she has to do is hit the "sync" button and she can now view everything that's his synced with his account. Previously she would have at most his email, now she has that and more. To me that seems like a decrease in privacy.
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      I don't want to get too far into specifics because I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure there are a number of inaccuracies in this comment. Notably, synced data would have been visible in myaccount.google.com already, and if he had syncing disabled, I don't think there wouldn't be any data synced with his account to view. In other words, assuming Alice was nefarious, yes this is still terrible, but I don't think it's just still terrible, not worse terrible. Edit: I'm rate limited, but to clarify, yes syncing is an account wide setting, hence you need to be authenticated to a specific account to change it. The entire point of syncing is to sync data between browsers on different devices.
pvorb 8y ago
You confuse privacy with security. Also, Google is abusing its market power here, even if the change might be in favor of Chrome's users.
seqizz 8y ago
Wait, could a change be "better" if a (somewhat) random example group of 10k users are agreed the change is bad. I am sorry but "abnormal users" is just funny. Who is "normal" and cares about privacy?
pg_bot 8y ago
Perhaps I can clarify why this was a terrible decision. As written this feature enables special privileges unavailable to other website developers via a direct integration with the browser. Imagine if some other company automatically added a feature directly to your browser without your consent. You would be rightfully angry if there was a yahoo/facebook/microsoft widget that you didn't approve being added to your toolbar. What's stopping the chrome team from adding more features to blur the line between the browser and google services? There are boundaries between websites, browsers, and users that should not be violated. This is nothing more than google putting their thumb on the scale to unfairly influence user behavior in their interest.
tedivm 8y ago
This is some real Orwellian stuff here. First off, since it applies to people logged out of Chrome and it forces them to log in it increases, not decreases, the chances of someone accidentally leaving their account available to others on the machine. Since the sync button no longer requires a password this means someone can log in at a library to check their email, walk away, and someone else can step up, hit the sync button, and steal all of their information. They've just made people less secure, not more. But lets take your argument and assume it's right. You could apply the same logic to every website on the internet- Amazon, people's bank accounts, phone companies, etc. Google is therefore abusing their status as the browser developer to give themselves special functionality that other websites can't give. This should open them up to a variety of antitrust actions (particularly in the EU). At the end of the day this could have been done by letting people opt-in to the login. Add a button on the google login sites that say "log into browser as well" and let the people who want it click it.
- starshadowx2 8y ago
  Just anecdotally since I used to manage the computers at a public library, we did have time software that would reset the computers back to a clean state after they either were done and clicked "end session" or they left it unattended for a minute. I'm still against this Chrome change for the same reasons, but I would hope other libraries do the same thing as we did. From my experience library tech people are usually really privacy focused.
  - codethief 8y ago
    > but I would hope other libraries do the same thing as we did In my experience, 9 out of 10 libraries, copy shops and internet cafés don't do this [properly].
    - starshadowx2 8y ago
      I wouldn't expect copy shops or internet cafes to do so as they're private/profit focused entities, and I definitely wouldn't lump libraries in with them. As a public entity we had a mandate to protect user information and make sure it wasn't stored by us or accessible by others. This applied across the organisation from what books someone checked out to what websites they visited. Maybe this was just more of a thing in Canada or even Alberta but the concept was definitely agreed upon with other libraries and people in the system I was in contact with. I have read other articles and such from American libraries about protecting information so I assumed it was more widespread.
amaccuish 8y ago
> If this change makes the browser better (using whatever metric you want, I'd argue the correct one here is privacy), How does automatically signing me into Chrome improve my privacy?
btilly 8y ago
How is sending my personal passwords to a server under Google's control an increase in my privacy? More importantly, doing so without users clearly knowing and consenting to it is a clear violation of GDPR. This is an absolute, not a relative standard. Which means that it doesn't matter how it compares to what things were like before. This for Google could be up to a $2 billion fine. 2% of worldwide annual revenue - annual revenue is around $100 billion. It would only take 13 fines per year of that size to reduce Google to not being profitable. So you shouldn't think about it as a question of opinions about UI design. Instead think about it as a question of liability. Do you as an employee want the people working on Chrome to be subjecting your employer to this kind of legal risk?
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  >How is sending my personal passwords to a server under Google's control an increase in my privacy? If this change did that, I might be inclined to agree with you. But as far as I know, it doesn't. You still have to explicitly opt in to syncing. Which is a no-op compared to the old behavior.
  - btilly 8y ago
    Look in the OP for the phrase "Mistaken synchronisation". You'll land at a section where he verified the steps by which a confused user could easily turn on synchronization without understanding that they had done so. Does this change your opinion?
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      Note that I explicitly mentioned this as the one consideration that was mildly convincing: >I think I've seen exactly one potentially compelling argument, which is that it may now be easier to accidentally enable syncing when you don't want to, since its a single click instead of entering a password. Personally, though, (and I want to highlight that this is just my opinion as a person) I don't think it's a regression. But I can understand why others might disagree. From what I've read, the old behavior was that logging in enabled syncing by default. So accidentally logging in would immediately sync things. I've certainly made the mistake of logging into the wrong account in the wrong chrome window, so I could absolutely see a user making the same mistake previously. But even if you disagree, I think "you can synchronize by mistake, so they should add a confirmation dialogue" (which is a change I would support!) puts this firmly into the realm of imperfect UX and not an attack on privacy that should be totally rolled back. And the aggravating (and potentially harmful) thing is that we can't even approach the discussion of "should we add a confirmation box", which would address the UX issue, if the accusation is that it's an attack on privacy. First we have to have this long tiring discussion where people throw around words like "Orwellian" and "GDPR" and we get to the reality that people are complaining about a whole host of not-really-harmful things, and that the one actually-maybe-harmful thing is a confirmation dialogue.
0x54D5 8y ago
Let's just say that I don't want my porn throwaway gmail account to have anything to do with my personal or work accounts. Ya'll fucked up big time. I uninstalled Chrome off all my computers today.
simion314 8y ago
You could have just ask for permissions for this new feature,what next switch the default browser or scan my files because it is better in some metric for some majority of users?
jlarocco 8y ago
> But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change, that's less than 1% of 1% of Chrome's user base. If this change makes the browser better (using whatever metric you want, I'd argue the correct one here is privacy), even marginally, for the average user, at the cost of a few people believing that the browser is behaving badly, that seems like an overall good change, doesn't it? Well what percentage of those billion users understands what's going on, versus the 10000 users here? Google's business model does depend on duping people who don't know any better, so maybe this isn't so surprising.. In any case, I don't think there'd be so much uproar if Google hadn't snuck the change in without telling anybody. There are release notes, why not use them? Why is that so hard to understand for a company that prides itself on hiring the best and brightest?

pvorb 8y ago

I think it's unlikely that the Chrome team will revert their decision. This will annoy people for a few days or even weeks, but people will eventually accept it. That's just how you make unpopular changes these days. Maybe the EU will do something about it, but this will take years.

nazri1 8y ago
Not unlike systemd, not too long ago...