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The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it's been about linking Google IDs with the browser. I've lost data twice by bugs related to not having a

by nvk 12y ago

The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it's been about linking Google IDs with the browser. I've lost data twice by bugs related to not having a linked ID. Please Google, understand this; I don't want my browser linked with my Google account.

pkmishra 12y ago
exactly!! I don't want Google everywhere.That's why I changed the default search engine to duckduckgo. Let's see how it goes.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Funny, that's part of why I use Chrome. Having all my Google accounts and apps available is a huge feature to me. Plus Firefox crashing is a huge downside. As for privacy implications, there's no reason to believe Google does anything inappropriate, and I rather like having my internet experience tailored based on past behaviour. To each their own I guess.
  - nvk 12y ago
    Sure, some people may like that. All I ask is a reasonable way of opting out.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - rockdoe 12y ago
    Plus Firefox crashing is a huge downside. How do you get Firefox to crash? What does about:crashes say? Did you report the bug?
    - Mikeb85 12y ago
      Running many WebGL demos. Whereas in Chrome only 1 tab will freeze. Also, pretty much anything that's Javascript + WebGL runs like shit in Firefox. Emscripten demos are good though. But Emscripten runs better in Chrome than JS+WebGL in Firefox.
      - jsheard 12y ago
        Shadertoy is a good test case for this: https://www.shadertoy.com/browse https://www.shadertoy.com/browse Compiling all those shaders is rough on any browser, but only Firefox gets its entire UI blocked. Even Internet Explorer manages to isolate the jank to one tab.
        frik 12y ago
        Chrome 1+, IE 9+ and Safari 7+ spawn child processes with less permissions ("sandbox") for almost every tab. Sadly Firefox 39 (nightly) still has no real multi process support. There are only two processes, the main process holds all tabs, the single child process "plugin-container" holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat, etc.). It's a bit disappointing to see such little progress since 2010. Hopefully Mozilla's Rust based Servo engine comes to the rescue soon and replaces gecko and its old XUL (XML based UI framework) with Servo and an HTML5 based UI (like Firefox OS). I use Firefox as development browser because of Firebug and and the new developer tools. Working with dozens of tabs open for days is only possible with IE11 and Chrome.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        dblohm7 12y ago
        "Sadly Firefox 39 (nightly) still has no real multi process support. There are only two processes, the main process holds all tabs, the single child process 'plugin-container' holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat, etc.)." That is incorrect. There is one plugin-container for each plugin module. All Flash instances share a single plugin-container, all Acrobat instances share a single plugin-container, and so forth. As for the e10s content process, for the moment there is only one content process. The plan is to get e10s working well with the one content process, and then start scaling that up to multiple content processes. Nightly is a bleeding edge development channel, after all.
    - Arelius 12y ago
      Is there a better way to report the bug than just use the built-in crash reporter? I still get super sporadic crashes, I think it has to do with having too many tabs loaded.
      - lizzard 12y ago
        Yes, if you follow one of the links from about:crashes, you can see the crash report. If there's already a bug on file for it, click on over to bugzilla.mozilla.org and see if you may be able to help out there. If there isn't already a bug active for your specific crash signature, you can try filing one and explain what you think may have caused the crash. Specific steps to reproduce a crash are especially helpful! Another interesting thing you can do: click through from about:crashes to your crash report. Then click the "more reports" link. You can see if your crash signature is rare or if you have one of the currently "popular" ones. If a lot of other people are crashing with that same signature, there is probably a bug and developers are probably discussing it. Again the most useful thing you can do is figuring out how to make that crash happen consistently and adding steps to reproduce it to its bug.
      - kasabali 12y ago
        > I think it has to do with having too many tabs loaded. If that's the case try using 64 bit builds.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  I tried that. DDG just wasn't even remotely good enough to service my searching habits. Instead, I've switched to Disconnect search. They proxy searches and claim to do so anonymously. So at least I'm not directly contributing to Google's profile building that way. It does add a second or two latency per search, which can be annoying. FF switched to Yahoo, and I'm just amused at how bad it is. They even open results in new tabs by default, a lame trick used to try to accidentally keep people on your site. It's unfortunate, but Google really does dominate in search.
  - morenoh149 12y ago
    I use Duckduckgo optimistically. First I use ddg then if the results aren't satisfactory I use google.
    - decasteve 12y ago
      The nice thing about DuckDuckGo is that you can just put !sp in front of your search and it will send the search to StartPage.com (for google results).
- metastart 12y ago
  You should try the Epic Privacy Browser if privacy matters to you but you still want the speed/security of chromium.
doe88 12y ago
They want to make their little OS inside your current OS, so that's it, they introduce accounts, users, apps, notifications... Meanwhile most people (including me) just want to browse the damn open internet.
- nvk 12y ago
  They are free to that, just please give me a reasonable way of opting out.
  - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
    It's called Chromium.
    - nickysielicki 12y ago
      Chromium still has Google logins.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      Chromium doesn't opt you out of linking the browser to a google account. Opting out of linking the browser to a google account is called "not doing it", because it's an optional step anyway. Also, chromium seems to be getting less and less care from google now. See this bug for example which prevents using screenshare in hangouts: https://crbug.com/416856 https://crbug.com/416856
    - iak8god 12y ago
      > It's called Chromium. It's called Firefox.
    - bigbugbag 12y ago
      Nah man, it's iron by srware and it has been around since 2008. check this comparison between chrome and iron (which is based on chromium): https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iro...
atesti 12y ago
How did you loose data that way? And I agree 100% with you!
- juliangregorian 12y ago
  I also lost data by this: I was trying to disable browser profiles but inadvertently deleted the cloud portion of my account that stored all my bookmarks. I'm a goddamn software developer, software doesn't usually make me feel stupid. So congrats to Google on that I guess...
  - pknerd 12y ago
    ThankGod I rather use EverNote Chrome extension to save Bookmarks
- frik 12y ago
  I lost all bookmarks as well (in Google Chrome Canary, not stable Chrome) due a bug. Canary sometimes is buggy and parts of the theme (e.g. scrollbar) sometimes even look like OSX, probably because most Chrome devs work on OSX and don't regression test the Win7+ daily-build that often. Storing bookmarks as *.lnk as with IE3+ is still the way to go. Though, I found out that 50% of my bookmarks are obsolete and many were never archived in archive.org due evil robots.txt entries.
weinzierl 12y ago
I'm honestly curious about the scenario where not having a linked ID caused you data loss. I was an early adopter of Chrome but have not used it for a while. Is this linked ID just the Cookie or another mechanism? How could not having it cause data loss?
- yid 12y ago
  Not sure how, but this happened to me. Specifically, my bookmarks accumulated over years seem to have been wiped out when I did decide to sign in. Turns out I had already synced a new computer, so Chrome decided to helpfully delete my un-signed-in bookmarks with the blank set from the new computer.
macNchz 12y ago
This was the driving reason I switched back to Firefox as my main browser about a year ago. It reached a tipping point when I discovered that there was no way to unlink a Google apps business account from Chrome without resetting the browser entirely. Being that I'd never intended to 'sign into Chrome' in the first place (the form looks awfully similar to the gmail login), I essentially rage-quit Chrome and haven't looked back since. I've embraced Firefox and I feel better using free and open source software. Performance has been excellent. The only thing I regularly notice is that many startups seem to only QA their products in Chrome.
- lelandbatey 12y ago
  Similarly, I became uncomfortable with the integration that Chrome was encouraging. Add to that the issues it was having with font rendering and displaying at different DPI's, and FireFox has been my go-to browser ever since. Additionally, I've found FireFox to be more consistent about it's quality, vs having occasional releases with a jump in bugs/instability.
- timdorr 12y ago
  You can just create a new Chrome "user", linked to another Google account (or not), make it the primary account, and delete the old one. They've actually gotten very upfront about their user features in recent versions. It's a great toolset for maintaining different sessions with multiple sites. Or for using as an incognito session with less ephemeral data.
- edgarallenbro 12y ago
  Google's way of handling accounts is infuriating. I have multiple g-mail accounts. One of them is my primary personal one, and another one I use is a shared account that my band uses for business and soundcloud. Google makes it hellish to sign out of one and into the other. For the longest time, I had them linked, and my band mates could see my personal e-mail. I don't know if they could get past a log in point, but the fact that its so hard to keep them un-linked and log into one or the other is infuriating.
  - 12y ago
api 12y ago
"Please Google, understand this; I don't want my browser linked with my Google account." But that's their entire business model.
- Djonckheere 12y ago
  hahahaha! Great response. Yes, mass digital surveillance or mass collection of data if you like. This is arguably Google's hidden agenda and perhaps the most compelling reason to dump Chrome aside from performance issues.
  - api 12y ago
    It's not a "hidden agenda." It's their overt, openly stated business model. They're an advertising company.
verytrivial 12y ago
I ditched Chrome for FF a couple of months ago for EXACTLY this reason. The omnipresent account name in the title bar was the clincher.
- timdorr 12y ago
  Then just change the name on the user. It's not required that you have the same name in the browser as on your Google account. I renamed mine "Work" and "Personal". It's helpful to isolate things so my side projects don't get sucked up into my work stuff.
  - verytrivial 12y ago
    Incognito already did that. Like the Great G+ Push, I was sick of feeling hounded. "Login?" "No." "Login, it's super easy." "No, really." "Go on, log in. It's great." "Seriously?" "How about now?" "See previous response ad nauseum. Goodbye."
justcommenting 12y ago
> I don't want my browser linked with my Google account. You might want to pay a lot more attention to SSL-based tracking methods, e.g. https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-security/client-identification-mechanisms#TOC-Lower-level-protocol-identifiers https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-se... Uncoupling your use of Google services from your other online activities is much harder than many people seem to believe.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- username223 12y ago
  > https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-security/client-identification-mechanisms#TOC-Lower-level-protocol-identifiers https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-se... Visiting a page on a creep's domain to find out about its creepiness seems like a bad idea.
  - bsdetector 12y ago
    A good point. They don't even mention connection reuse information leaks, for instance if any one URL sent to google analytics contains fingerprint information then all URLs sent over that same connection belong to you as well, as the network connection is kept open a long time and reused across all domains. I wonder if they are aware of the problem or just didn't mention it. Now that Google has pushed HTTP/2 on everybody, connection reuse will be a major new fingerprinting and tracking technique because it keeps connections open a long time and essentially can't be proxied so one connection is always one browser.
igl 12y ago
There are forks of chromium like iron improving the situation... If people would use them and contribute.
- derf_ 12y ago
  Why would you use and contribute to one of them instead of Firefox?
  - logn 12y ago
    Firefox is a giant ugly beast of code and it too has an overlord (albeit, a gentler one). And FF dev forums/tickets are not exactly joyous places, especially for non-Mozilla employees. If I had to contribute to an open source browser, it would be in a small community of friendly volunteers.
- spain 12y ago
  I wouldn't recommend Iron. http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.html http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.ht...
  - metastart 12y ago
    Epic Privacy Browser is a great choice for a chrome alternative, especially if privacy matters to you.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
You absolutely must link your Google Chrome install to your Google ID on Windows or you will lose data. Google Chrome now has a "feature" that will automatically reset your homepage, search settings, wipe all extensions and wipe all extension data whenever it detects an unexpected change to any of your settings files or they do not match up to the PC they are locked to. The goal was to prevent third parties from hijacking your search engine within Chrome. Things like bundleware installers on Windows that switch it. The actual result is that all your settings are now locked to a specific PC and will be reset anytime anything changes. As the developer of Google Chrome Portable, this means only your bookmarks move with you as you move PCs unless you're logged in. This also means that even if you backup your Chrome install, if your PC dies, you can not restore that Chrome install on another PC. Your bookmarks will be restored, but you will lose your settings, extensions, and passwords since your profile was moved to a new PC. This stands in stark contrast to Firefox which is completely self-contained. If a third party bundleware installer hijacks your search engine or homepage, you can simply set them back as they should be. All your extensions, extension settings, etc will continue working as expected whether or not you opt to use Firefox Sync.
- vxNsr 12y ago
  Well at least there's a reasonable explanation, and even if I don't like it for myself, as an IT guy I totally understand where they're coming from.
- terminado 12y ago
  You absolutely must link your Google Chrome install to your Google ID on Windows or you will lose data. Oh man... Settings and bookmarks are not "data" in any substantial sense. Incognito mode at all times, no Google ID ever, trash local history on every exit. I don't carry the expectation that my bookmarks must live on and follow me from machine to machine. I don't care about what my search preferences are. I simply turn address bar searches off, or point it to localhost. I don't conduct rampant web searches from the address bar, because an address bar is an address bar, and I only feed it well-formed URLs. I don't waste my time regularly using web sites that can't provide me with a URL that isn't intended to be typed, and sub pages that I can't readily navigate to. Address to long? No soup for you. Absurd URL parameters? No soup for you. Deeply nested pages, locked away behind a login, 30 clicks deep, and obscured by dark patterns? No. Soup. For. You. Preferences are preferences, and that's all they are. The default install should be completely useful and practical as-is, on a clean install. If it isn't then preferences should be exportable to plaint-text using an open standard. Firefox happily dumps its bookmarks as simple JSON. As a result, when I want to transport my bookmarks I can, although, digging back into my archive more than a year 50% tend to perish due to simple link rot.
zer0defex 12y ago
This. I use Firefox specifically because it allows you to set history to NEVER be remembered. Really wish Safari did the same...
- gknoy 12y ago
  Why not just always open Incognito windows?
  - barrkel 12y ago
    Bookmarks, extensions etc. are all missing in Incognito windows.
    - zer0defex 12y ago
      Yep, this is part of the reason why. But mostly I see no benefits from having it enabled, but quite a few negatives (security, privacy, etc). As long as the browser keeps the history of your current browser session alive while the browser stays open, that's perfectly fine for me.
    - SBullet01 12y ago
      Actually they don't. If you go to the settings menu you can allow everything that works in normal mode to also work in incognito.
austenallred 12y ago
You should probably understand this: Google doesn't give a shit. The total market share of people who care about whether or not their browser is linked with their Google account is probably less than one percent. The value they get from knowing everything you do online? I'm not sure how you'd calculate that, but I'm positive it's greater than losing the tiny number of hackers who are protective of their personal data. Google will continue to build the browser under the assumption that your browser will be linked with your Google account. If you don't link, you'll be a permanent edge case. If you don't want to link your account, it's much easier to just switch browsers.
- eplanit 12y ago
  You're right. We can add this (already predictable) aspect to our visions of the future where we get into our self-driving Googleobile that on startup signs into our Google accounts...
- asuffield 12y ago
  (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing my employer, read the links for yourself. I work at Google, not on Chrome.) > The value they get from knowing everything you do online? This is a myth. Or less politely, a lie you have been told. https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/privacy/ https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/privacy/ is very clear about exactly when chrome reports back data, including what happens when you sign in. It does not report your online activity in ways different from other web browsers. It sends just about the minimum possible to implement the features it provides.
  - shostack 12y ago
    Who said the browser has to report everything you do online to be of value. I don't claim to know anything about how Chrome works, so could be completely wrong in this, but my sense is that it is part of a broader desire to tie together tracking across all devices. Cracking that nut is very difficult from an analytics perspective, and having people logged in to Chrome across all devices provides a very convenient GUID for matching against AdSense units, DFA tags, GA tags, etc. So the value in this play is not necessarily in knowing everything you do online, but simply knowing that you are who you are regardless of device or Chrome instance. That means data about you is consistent, and can feed into the broader targeting algorithms to serve you the right ad, at the right place, at the right time. Again, I don't know what data Chrome makes available to Google's ad services, so please tell me if I am in fact incorrect here.
protonfish 12y ago
This is probably one of the reasons why I have been using Firefox for web browsing and Chrome only as a dedicated gmail reader. I doubt this is what Google wants, but it has been working great for me.
Artemis2 12y ago
Chromium does not include the Google bloat and works flawlessly. I don't know whether it will make you lose data, but personally never had any issues with it.
Steko 12y ago
My solution to this was to use both. I use Chrome only for Gmail and Docs (drive, whatever...) and disabled the auto-updater. I use Firefox with DDG for everything else. Couldn't be happier.
- rtpg 12y ago
  why did you disable the auto-updater? sounds like a bad idea to stop getting security updates and the like, right?
  - username223 12y ago
    > why did you disable the auto-updater? Speaking for myself, I always disable (i.e. "rm -rf") auto-updaters because they don't separate security updates from other random changes. Browsers are the worst, with a "major version upgrade" every month dropping whatever the developers had on their build server onto my computer.

by nvk 12y ago

pkmishra 12y ago

exactly!! I don't want Google everywhere.That's why I changed the default search engine to duckduckgo. Let's see how it goes.

Mikeb85 12y ago
Funny, that's part of why I use Chrome. Having all my Google accounts and apps available is a huge feature to me. Plus Firefox crashing is a huge downside. As for privacy implications, there's no reason to believe Google does anything inappropriate, and I rather like having my internet experience tailored based on past behaviour. To each their own I guess.
- nvk 12y ago
  Sure, some people may like that. All I ask is a reasonable way of opting out.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- rockdoe 12y ago
  Plus Firefox crashing is a huge downside. How do you get Firefox to crash? What does about:crashes say? Did you report the bug?
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Running many WebGL demos. Whereas in Chrome only 1 tab will freeze. Also, pretty much anything that's Javascript + WebGL runs like shit in Firefox. Emscripten demos are good though. But Emscripten runs better in Chrome than JS+WebGL in Firefox.
    - jsheard 12y ago
      Shadertoy is a good test case for this: https://www.shadertoy.com/browse https://www.shadertoy.com/browse Compiling all those shaders is rough on any browser, but only Firefox gets its entire UI blocked. Even Internet Explorer manages to isolate the jank to one tab.
      - frik 12y ago
        Chrome 1+, IE 9+ and Safari 7+ spawn child processes with less permissions ("sandbox") for almost every tab. Sadly Firefox 39 (nightly) still has no real multi process support. There are only two processes, the main process holds all tabs, the single child process "plugin-container" holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat, etc.). It's a bit disappointing to see such little progress since 2010. Hopefully Mozilla's Rust based Servo engine comes to the rescue soon and replaces gecko and its old XUL (XML based UI framework) with Servo and an HTML5 based UI (like Firefox OS). I use Firefox as development browser because of Firebug and and the new developer tools. Working with dozens of tabs open for days is only possible with IE11 and Chrome.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        dblohm7 12y ago
        "Sadly Firefox 39 (nightly) still has no real multi process support. There are only two processes, the main process holds all tabs, the single child process 'plugin-container' holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat, etc.)." That is incorrect. There is one plugin-container for each plugin module. All Flash instances share a single plugin-container, all Acrobat instances share a single plugin-container, and so forth. As for the e10s content process, for the moment there is only one content process. The plan is to get e10s working well with the one content process, and then start scaling that up to multiple content processes. Nightly is a bleeding edge development channel, after all.
  - Arelius 12y ago
    Is there a better way to report the bug than just use the built-in crash reporter? I still get super sporadic crashes, I think it has to do with having too many tabs loaded.
    - lizzard 12y ago
      Yes, if you follow one of the links from about:crashes, you can see the crash report. If there's already a bug on file for it, click on over to bugzilla.mozilla.org and see if you may be able to help out there. If there isn't already a bug active for your specific crash signature, you can try filing one and explain what you think may have caused the crash. Specific steps to reproduce a crash are especially helpful! Another interesting thing you can do: click through from about:crashes to your crash report. Then click the "more reports" link. You can see if your crash signature is rare or if you have one of the currently "popular" ones. If a lot of other people are crashing with that same signature, there is probably a bug and developers are probably discussing it. Again the most useful thing you can do is figuring out how to make that crash happen consistently and adding steps to reproduce it to its bug.
    - kasabali 12y ago
      > I think it has to do with having too many tabs loaded. If that's the case try using 64 bit builds.
MichaelGG 12y ago
I tried that. DDG just wasn't even remotely good enough to service my searching habits. Instead, I've switched to Disconnect search. They proxy searches and claim to do so anonymously. So at least I'm not directly contributing to Google's profile building that way. It does add a second or two latency per search, which can be annoying. FF switched to Yahoo, and I'm just amused at how bad it is. They even open results in new tabs by default, a lame trick used to try to accidentally keep people on your site. It's unfortunate, but Google really does dominate in search.
- morenoh149 12y ago
  I use Duckduckgo optimistically. First I use ddg then if the results aren't satisfactory I use google.
  - decasteve 12y ago
    The nice thing about DuckDuckGo is that you can just put !sp in front of your search and it will send the search to StartPage.com (for google results).
metastart 12y ago
You should try the Epic Privacy Browser if privacy matters to you but you still want the speed/security of chromium.

doe88 12y ago

They want to make their little OS inside your current OS, so that's it, they introduce accounts, users, apps, notifications... Meanwhile most people (including me) just want to browse the damn open internet.

nvk 12y ago
They are free to that, just please give me a reasonable way of opting out.
- kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
  It's called Chromium.
  - nickysielicki 12y ago
    Chromium still has Google logins.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    Chromium doesn't opt you out of linking the browser to a google account. Opting out of linking the browser to a google account is called "not doing it", because it's an optional step anyway. Also, chromium seems to be getting less and less care from google now. See this bug for example which prevents using screenshare in hangouts: https://crbug.com/416856 https://crbug.com/416856
  - iak8god 12y ago
    > It's called Chromium. It's called Firefox.
  - bigbugbag 12y ago
    Nah man, it's iron by srware and it has been around since 2008. check this comparison between chrome and iron (which is based on chromium): https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iro...

atesti 12y ago

How did you loose data that way? And I agree 100% with you!

juliangregorian 12y ago
I also lost data by this: I was trying to disable browser profiles but inadvertently deleted the cloud portion of my account that stored all my bookmarks. I'm a goddamn software developer, software doesn't usually make me feel stupid. So congrats to Google on that I guess...
- pknerd 12y ago
  ThankGod I rather use EverNote Chrome extension to save Bookmarks
frik 12y ago
I lost all bookmarks as well (in Google Chrome Canary, not stable Chrome) due a bug. Canary sometimes is buggy and parts of the theme (e.g. scrollbar) sometimes even look like OSX, probably because most Chrome devs work on OSX and don't regression test the Win7+ daily-build that often. Storing bookmarks as *.lnk as with IE3+ is still the way to go. Though, I found out that 50% of my bookmarks are obsolete and many were never archived in archive.org due evil robots.txt entries.

weinzierl 12y ago

I'm honestly curious about the scenario where not having a linked ID caused you data loss. I was an early adopter of Chrome but have not used it for a while. Is this linked ID just the Cookie or another mechanism? How could not having it cause data loss?

yid 12y ago
Not sure how, but this happened to me. Specifically, my bookmarks accumulated over years seem to have been wiped out when I did decide to sign in. Turns out I had already synced a new computer, so Chrome decided to helpfully delete my un-signed-in bookmarks with the blank set from the new computer.

macNchz 12y ago

This was the driving reason I switched back to Firefox as my main browser about a year ago. It reached a tipping point when I discovered that there was no way to unlink a Google apps business account from Chrome without resetting the browser entirely. Being that I'd never intended to 'sign into Chrome' in the first place (the form looks awfully similar to the gmail login), I essentially rage-quit Chrome and haven't looked back since. I've embraced Firefox and I feel better using free and open source software. Performance has been excellent. The only thing I regularly notice is that many startups seem to only QA their products in Chrome.

lelandbatey 12y ago
Similarly, I became uncomfortable with the integration that Chrome was encouraging. Add to that the issues it was having with font rendering and displaying at different DPI's, and FireFox has been my go-to browser ever since. Additionally, I've found FireFox to be more consistent about it's quality, vs having occasional releases with a jump in bugs/instability.
timdorr 12y ago
You can just create a new Chrome "user", linked to another Google account (or not), make it the primary account, and delete the old one. They've actually gotten very upfront about their user features in recent versions. It's a great toolset for maintaining different sessions with multiple sites. Or for using as an incognito session with less ephemeral data.
edgarallenbro 12y ago
Google's way of handling accounts is infuriating. I have multiple g-mail accounts. One of them is my primary personal one, and another one I use is a shared account that my band uses for business and soundcloud. Google makes it hellish to sign out of one and into the other. For the longest time, I had them linked, and my band mates could see my personal e-mail. I don't know if they could get past a log in point, but the fact that its so hard to keep them un-linked and log into one or the other is infuriating.
- 12y ago

api 12y ago

"Please Google, understand this; I don't want my browser linked with my Google account." But that's their entire business model.

Djonckheere 12y ago
hahahaha! Great response. Yes, mass digital surveillance or mass collection of data if you like. This is arguably Google's hidden agenda and perhaps the most compelling reason to dump Chrome aside from performance issues.
- api 12y ago
  It's not a "hidden agenda." It's their overt, openly stated business model. They're an advertising company.

verytrivial 12y ago

I ditched Chrome for FF a couple of months ago for EXACTLY this reason. The omnipresent account name in the title bar was the clincher.

timdorr 12y ago
Then just change the name on the user. It's not required that you have the same name in the browser as on your Google account. I renamed mine "Work" and "Personal". It's helpful to isolate things so my side projects don't get sucked up into my work stuff.
- verytrivial 12y ago
  Incognito already did that. Like the Great G+ Push, I was sick of feeling hounded. "Login?" "No." "Login, it's super easy." "No, really." "Go on, log in. It's great." "Seriously?" "How about now?" "See previous response ad nauseum. Goodbye."

justcommenting 12y ago

> I don't want my browser linked with my Google account. You might want to pay a lot more attention to SSL-based tracking methods, e.g. https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-security/client-identification-mechanisms#TOC-Lower-level-protocol-identifiers https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-se... Uncoupling your use of Google services from your other online activities is much harder than many people seem to believe.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
username223 12y ago
> https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-security/client-identification-mechanisms#TOC-Lower-level-protocol-identifiers https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium-se... Visiting a page on a creep's domain to find out about its creepiness seems like a bad idea.
- bsdetector 12y ago
  A good point. They don't even mention connection reuse information leaks, for instance if any one URL sent to google analytics contains fingerprint information then all URLs sent over that same connection belong to you as well, as the network connection is kept open a long time and reused across all domains. I wonder if they are aware of the problem or just didn't mention it. Now that Google has pushed HTTP/2 on everybody, connection reuse will be a major new fingerprinting and tracking technique because it keeps connections open a long time and essentially can't be proxied so one connection is always one browser.

igl 12y ago

There are forks of chromium like iron improving the situation... If people would use them and contribute.

derf_ 12y ago
Why would you use and contribute to one of them instead of Firefox?
- logn 12y ago
  Firefox is a giant ugly beast of code and it too has an overlord (albeit, a gentler one). And FF dev forums/tickets are not exactly joyous places, especially for non-Mozilla employees. If I had to contribute to an open source browser, it would be in a small community of friendly volunteers.
spain 12y ago
I wouldn't recommend Iron. http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.html http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.ht...
- metastart 12y ago
  Epic Privacy Browser is a great choice for a chrome alternative, especially if privacy matters to you.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

You absolutely must link your Google Chrome install to your Google ID on Windows or you will lose data. Google Chrome now has a "feature" that will automatically reset your homepage, search settings, wipe all extensions and wipe all extension data whenever it detects an unexpected change to any of your settings files or they do not match up to the PC they are locked to. The goal was to prevent third parties from hijacking your search engine within Chrome. Things like bundleware installers on Windows that switch it. The actual result is that all your settings are now locked to a specific PC and will be reset anytime anything changes. As the developer of Google Chrome Portable, this means only your bookmarks move with you as you move PCs unless you're logged in. This also means that even if you backup your Chrome install, if your PC dies, you can not restore that Chrome install on another PC. Your bookmarks will be restored, but you will lose your settings, extensions, and passwords since your profile was moved to a new PC. This stands in stark contrast to Firefox which is completely self-contained. If a third party bundleware installer hijacks your search engine or homepage, you can simply set them back as they should be. All your extensions, extension settings, etc will continue working as expected whether or not you opt to use Firefox Sync.

vxNsr 12y ago
Well at least there's a reasonable explanation, and even if I don't like it for myself, as an IT guy I totally understand where they're coming from.
terminado 12y ago
You absolutely must link your Google Chrome install to your Google ID on Windows or you will lose data. Oh man... Settings and bookmarks are not "data" in any substantial sense. Incognito mode at all times, no Google ID ever, trash local history on every exit. I don't carry the expectation that my bookmarks must live on and follow me from machine to machine. I don't care about what my search preferences are. I simply turn address bar searches off, or point it to localhost. I don't conduct rampant web searches from the address bar, because an address bar is an address bar, and I only feed it well-formed URLs. I don't waste my time regularly using web sites that can't provide me with a URL that isn't intended to be typed, and sub pages that I can't readily navigate to. Address to long? No soup for you. Absurd URL parameters? No soup for you. Deeply nested pages, locked away behind a login, 30 clicks deep, and obscured by dark patterns? No. Soup. For. You. Preferences are preferences, and that's all they are. The default install should be completely useful and practical as-is, on a clean install. If it isn't then preferences should be exportable to plaint-text using an open standard. Firefox happily dumps its bookmarks as simple JSON. As a result, when I want to transport my bookmarks I can, although, digging back into my archive more than a year 50% tend to perish due to simple link rot.

zer0defex 12y ago

This. I use Firefox specifically because it allows you to set history to NEVER be remembered. Really wish Safari did the same...

gknoy 12y ago
Why not just always open Incognito windows?
- barrkel 12y ago
  Bookmarks, extensions etc. are all missing in Incognito windows.
  - zer0defex 12y ago
    Yep, this is part of the reason why. But mostly I see no benefits from having it enabled, but quite a few negatives (security, privacy, etc). As long as the browser keeps the history of your current browser session alive while the browser stays open, that's perfectly fine for me.
  - SBullet01 12y ago
    Actually they don't. If you go to the settings menu you can allow everything that works in normal mode to also work in incognito.

austenallred 12y ago

You should probably understand this: Google doesn't give a shit. The total market share of people who care about whether or not their browser is linked with their Google account is probably less than one percent. The value they get from knowing everything you do online? I'm not sure how you'd calculate that, but I'm positive it's greater than losing the tiny number of hackers who are protective of their personal data. Google will continue to build the browser under the assumption that your browser will be linked with your Google account. If you don't link, you'll be a permanent edge case. If you don't want to link your account, it's much easier to just switch browsers.

eplanit 12y ago
You're right. We can add this (already predictable) aspect to our visions of the future where we get into our self-driving Googleobile that on startup signs into our Google accounts...
asuffield 12y ago
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing my employer, read the links for yourself. I work at Google, not on Chrome.) > The value they get from knowing everything you do online? This is a myth. Or less politely, a lie you have been told. https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/privacy/ https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/privacy/ is very clear about exactly when chrome reports back data, including what happens when you sign in. It does not report your online activity in ways different from other web browsers. It sends just about the minimum possible to implement the features it provides.
- shostack 12y ago
  Who said the browser has to report everything you do online to be of value. I don't claim to know anything about how Chrome works, so could be completely wrong in this, but my sense is that it is part of a broader desire to tie together tracking across all devices. Cracking that nut is very difficult from an analytics perspective, and having people logged in to Chrome across all devices provides a very convenient GUID for matching against AdSense units, DFA tags, GA tags, etc. So the value in this play is not necessarily in knowing everything you do online, but simply knowing that you are who you are regardless of device or Chrome instance. That means data about you is consistent, and can feed into the broader targeting algorithms to serve you the right ad, at the right place, at the right time. Again, I don't know what data Chrome makes available to Google's ad services, so please tell me if I am in fact incorrect here.

protonfish 12y ago

This is probably one of the reasons why I have been using Firefox for web browsing and Chrome only as a dedicated gmail reader. I doubt this is what Google wants, but it has been working great for me.

Artemis2 12y ago

Chromium does not include the Google bloat and works flawlessly. I don't know whether it will make you lose data, but personally never had any issues with it.

Steko 12y ago

My solution to this was to use both. I use Chrome only for Gmail and Docs (drive, whatever...) and disabled the auto-updater. I use Firefox with DDG for everything else. Couldn't be happier.

rtpg 12y ago
why did you disable the auto-updater? sounds like a bad idea to stop getting security updates and the like, right?
- username223 12y ago
  > why did you disable the auto-updater? Speaking for myself, I always disable (i.e. "rm -rf") auto-updaters because they don't separate security updates from other random changes. Browsers are the worst, with a "major version upgrade" every month dropping whatever the developers had on their build server onto my computer.