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But I had my pitchfork out and everything... Seriously, 9 times out of 10 when I see stuff like this, I'm happy I can go to the HN comments and see what the re

But I had my pitchfork out and everything... Seriously, 9 times out of 10 when I see stuff like this, I'm happy I can go to the HN comments and see what the real deal is. I don't think Google deserves a free pass in their decisions, and lots of times I see them push things for "user safety" or "better user experience", oh and oh yeah it also happens to allow Google to better track you. But still, Google has tons of competing issues they need to balance, and I loath it when people pretend like their need is the only one that matters. It's like the debate over Google requiring 2FA for logins. "People losing their 2FA device" is a valid concern, but so is the 10 or 100x the people who get hacked with bad passwords. Not arguing there is a single solution, but you can't argue in good faith by pretending the problem Google is trying to address doesn't exist.

tomjakubowski 3y ago
Unfortunately in this case you've gone to the HN comments and been misinformed. GP misunderstood the problem. This issue is about Google adding tracking links to links in _HTML exports_ of Google docs.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I'm not misinformed. There are other comments here that make that point, and I think https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37779383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37779383 is a reasonable rejoinder. I think it's fair to argue that exported files should not have redirect links enabled, but as a software engineer I can imagine the complexity involved, or that there are still reasonable malware concerns. Perhaps the decision to have the exports include the redirects should be re-evaluated, but I certainly wouldn't attribute it to malice.