4 ms·

You can no longer remove default search engines on Chromium

37 points by nofunsir 5y ago

washadjeffmad 5y ago
I wonder if this is a response to new search experiences like Neeva, the ad-free engine started by two ex-Googlers? I recently signed up and really enjoy it. It makes today's Google experience feel like its one of the bad olds from the early 2000s.
nofunsir 5y ago
The related Chromium “bug” report: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1263679 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=126367... Simply astounding.
kup0 5y ago
Looks like they've reversed on this, one of the latest comments on the bug link is: "The new plan is to take the alternate approach of presenting a confirmation dialog when deleting built-in search engines. This should serve nearly as well to protect against accidental deletions while still allowing users to intentionally remove built-in search engines"
- nofunsir 5y ago
  Though it appears they may reverse this, I think it’s worth discussion that a googler commented the following within 90mins after issue 1263679 creation: “Yep, I think Tommy, Angela, and I all came to the same conclusion that we'd like the pre-populated search engines list to be indestructible, or maybe even immutable. A front-end UI restriction sounds like a step in the right direction.” Also of interest, it seems the one who reported the bug with “strong preference” is the one who implemented the change.
  - user3939382 5y ago
    They’ll be immutably non-existent because I won’t use the browser in that case, I pretty much don’t already due to Google’s ethical bankruptcy. Notice how almost none of these updates gives the user more control over their computer, network utilization, or browser. I’m still regularly trying to help Chrome users in my life understand the difference between being signed into Chrome and signed into Google.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
james-redwood 5y ago
And yet Mozilla continues to not focus solely on Firefox. Losing a competitor to Chromium will almost be as bad as losing net neutrality.
- postalrat 5y ago
  At this point I'd almost rather see mozilla abandon firefox and build a version of chromium that's better for the user than google's chrome could ever be.
  - jayofdoom 5y ago
    Absolutely not. We're in a period on the internet right now that has Chrome based browsers with a market share like ie6 had back in the day. The primary reason I use Firefox is because it's a completely different engine and I think diversity in browsers is important to the health of the web as a whole.
14u2c 5y ago
This seems like noise about nothing? The intention was clearly to prevent the user from accidentally removing all the search engines, not a malicious attempt to prefer certain engines. If you don't like the current default simply add your own provider, set it to be default, then delete all the rest.
- sharikous 5y ago
  Not clearly, not. The context suggests bad faith. And of course it is, clearly, a preference given to certain engines
emptyparadise 5y ago
Why not just have a way to restore the defaults? (this is a rhetorical question)
londons_explore 5y ago
I don't see why this matters either way. Who cares about the presence or absence of a non-selected search engine? Anything that's in the list but not the default will never be used anyway.
londons_explore 5y ago
I assume the rationale behind this change is that malware removes all the search engines and then inserts a new one of its own, and the user fixing that is hard.

37 points by nofunsir 5y ago

I wonder if this is a response to new search experiences like Neeva, the ad-free engine started by two ex-Googlers? I recently signed up and really enjoy it. It makes today's Google experience feel like its one of the bad olds from the early 2000s.

nofunsir 5y ago

The related Chromium “bug” report: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1263679 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=126367... Simply astounding.

kup0 5y ago

Looks like they've reversed on this, one of the latest comments on the bug link is: "The new plan is to take the alternate approach of presenting a confirmation dialog when deleting built-in search engines. This should serve nearly as well to protect against accidental deletions while still allowing users to intentionally remove built-in search engines"

nofunsir 5y ago
Though it appears they may reverse this, I think it’s worth discussion that a googler commented the following within 90mins after issue 1263679 creation: “Yep, I think Tommy, Angela, and I all came to the same conclusion that we'd like the pre-populated search engines list to be indestructible, or maybe even immutable. A front-end UI restriction sounds like a step in the right direction.” Also of interest, it seems the one who reported the bug with “strong preference” is the one who implemented the change.
- user3939382 5y ago
  They’ll be immutably non-existent because I won’t use the browser in that case, I pretty much don’t already due to Google’s ethical bankruptcy. Notice how almost none of these updates gives the user more control over their computer, network utilization, or browser. I’m still regularly trying to help Chrome users in my life understand the difference between being signed into Chrome and signed into Google.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

james-redwood 5y ago

And yet Mozilla continues to not focus solely on Firefox. Losing a competitor to Chromium will almost be as bad as losing net neutrality.

postalrat 5y ago
At this point I'd almost rather see mozilla abandon firefox and build a version of chromium that's better for the user than google's chrome could ever be.
- jayofdoom 5y ago
  Absolutely not. We're in a period on the internet right now that has Chrome based browsers with a market share like ie6 had back in the day. The primary reason I use Firefox is because it's a completely different engine and I think diversity in browsers is important to the health of the web as a whole.

14u2c 5y ago

This seems like noise about nothing? The intention was clearly to prevent the user from accidentally removing all the search engines, not a malicious attempt to prefer certain engines. If you don't like the current default simply add your own provider, set it to be default, then delete all the rest.

sharikous 5y ago
Not clearly, not. The context suggests bad faith. And of course it is, clearly, a preference given to certain engines

emptyparadise 5y ago

Why not just have a way to restore the defaults? (this is a rhetorical question)

londons_explore 5y ago

I don't see why this matters either way. Who cares about the presence or absence of a non-selected search engine? Anything that's in the list but not the default will never be used anyway.

londons_explore 5y ago

I assume the rationale behind this change is that malware removes all the search engines and then inserts a new one of its own, and the user fixing that is hard.