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It’s pretty damning for Google, the company, which clearly had knowledge they were misrepresenting “incognito mode”. Whether or not it’s damning for the individ

It’s pretty damning for Google, the company, which clearly had knowledge they were misrepresenting “incognito mode”. Whether or not it’s damning for the individual engineers is a matter of debate, likely depending on whether or not they worked on the feature or if they had the ability to do anything about it.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
As others have pointed out, that's pretty nonsense. When you open an "incognito" tab it says right there: "Your activity might still be visible to: Websites that you visit Your employer or school Your Internet service provider" Not exactly ambiguous or misrepresentative. It's for browsing porn without your spouse knowing. That's about it.
- dunham 4y ago
  I occasionally use it for sites that uMatrix is a bit too aggressive with. On Mobile Safari I use private browsing for my kid's youtube, so my recommendations aren't full of minecraft videos. But now that I think of it, it might be fun to teach youtube that people who watch minecraft videos are also interested in type theory and Edward Kmett videos.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Don't expect much. My YouTube feed is full of Terraria and Minecraft and Skyrim thanks to my son... mixed with CMU Database CS lectures, telemark skiing, gardening, and LoTR mythology videos, but let me tell you that YouTube has failed to syncretize anything interesting from this fusion :-)
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      It still surprises me that 100% of HN people aren't using ublock...
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > alleges the Silicon Valley giant misled the public about how much data it collects from users even when they're in its Chrome browser's "Incognito" private browsing mode. That warning doesn't include Google tracking you as well.
- wrs 4y ago
  The internal controversy seems to be that it doesn’t warn that your activity is still visible to Google (for ad targeting and conversion tracking). Which is arguably much less obvious.
  - ikiris 4y ago
    Reread what they said. The only thing incognito ever offered was not saving local history.
  - gruez 4y ago
    That seems to be covered by "Your activity might still be visible to: Websites that you visit"?
    - sooyoo 4y ago
      It's tracked by Google even if you never visit a page operated by Google. Non-Google websites that include Google tracking are contributing here (which is most of the web). The sentence you cite suggests that it's "just" such sites that see your activity, while it's a third party (Google) that does as well and that is the issue here. Sure, technically you could argue that the tracking is "part" of the website that you visit, so it's technically still "only" the site that's tracking you. But let's be honest here, no reasonable non-hair-splitting non-geek would read it that way.
      - thewebcount 4y ago
        Thank you for pointing this out. It's strange the contortions other posters here are going through to pretend that a normal person wouldn't understand that when Google tells you're in incognito mode, Google still tracks you. If I put Firefox in private mode, I'm pretty sure the Mozilla Foundation doesn't get to see a bunch of my activity. It's pretty simple.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        4y ago
- sshine 4y ago
  > It's for browsing porn without your spouse knowing. That's about it. #notallspouses! It's for being able to open a tab while screen-sharing with strangers (colleagues, friends) without the browser suggesting porn sites with matching keywords.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

As others have pointed out, that's pretty nonsense. When you open an "incognito" tab it says right there: "Your activity might still be visible to: Websites that you visit Your employer or school Your Internet service provider" Not exactly ambiguous or misrepresentative. It's for browsing porn without your spouse knowing. That's about it.

dunham 4y ago
I occasionally use it for sites that uMatrix is a bit too aggressive with. On Mobile Safari I use private browsing for my kid's youtube, so my recommendations aren't full of minecraft videos. But now that I think of it, it might be fun to teach youtube that people who watch minecraft videos are also interested in type theory and Edward Kmett videos.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Don't expect much. My YouTube feed is full of Terraria and Minecraft and Skyrim thanks to my son... mixed with CMU Database CS lectures, telemark skiing, gardening, and LoTR mythology videos, but let me tell you that YouTube has failed to syncretize anything interesting from this fusion :-)
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    It still surprises me that 100% of HN people aren't using ublock...
lamontcg 4y ago
> alleges the Silicon Valley giant misled the public about how much data it collects from users even when they're in its Chrome browser's "Incognito" private browsing mode. That warning doesn't include Google tracking you as well.
wrs 4y ago
The internal controversy seems to be that it doesn’t warn that your activity is still visible to Google (for ad targeting and conversion tracking). Which is arguably much less obvious.
- ikiris 4y ago
  Reread what they said. The only thing incognito ever offered was not saving local history.
- gruez 4y ago
  That seems to be covered by "Your activity might still be visible to: Websites that you visit"?
  - sooyoo 4y ago
    It's tracked by Google even if you never visit a page operated by Google. Non-Google websites that include Google tracking are contributing here (which is most of the web). The sentence you cite suggests that it's "just" such sites that see your activity, while it's a third party (Google) that does as well and that is the issue here. Sure, technically you could argue that the tracking is "part" of the website that you visit, so it's technically still "only" the site that's tracking you. But let's be honest here, no reasonable non-hair-splitting non-geek would read it that way.
    - thewebcount 4y ago
      Thank you for pointing this out. It's strange the contortions other posters here are going through to pretend that a normal person wouldn't understand that when Google tells you're in incognito mode, Google still tracks you. If I put Firefox in private mode, I'm pretty sure the Mozilla Foundation doesn't get to see a bunch of my activity. It's pretty simple.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - 4y ago
sshine 4y ago
> It's for browsing porn without your spouse knowing. That's about it. #notallspouses! It's for being able to open a tab while screen-sharing with strangers (colleagues, friends) without the browser suggesting porn sites with matching keywords.