If one side enabled this "use E2E encryption for everything" feature, then the other side would presumably no longer have access to any of the smart assistant features. And it would not be obvious why.

Additionally, it would be hard to explain why you'd ever want to enable such a feature which means nobody would do it. I suspect you want default E2E encryption for political reasons. Such things don't work unless it's on by default.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I want E2E to be separate from the "delete chats when I'm finished" feature.

Wanting an E2E chat that stays on my device when I'm done should be fine.

I'm fine with having E2E require a separate mode, but that shouldn't be bundled with the incognito feature of not remembering history.

Why can't it store E2E chats locally and never upload to google, or even encrypt with a passphrase like Chrome sync does?

Of course they won't be open about this, because they're making the world a better place <insertcuteemojihere>

Only if all other participants in that chat are fine with it. So you'd end up with an implementation that only allows saving to disk if all parties allow saving. That's a lot more complexity than simply a separate checkbox.

I still agree with you, there is value in allowing the features to be controlled separately.

In other words, it would be bad for Whisper to allow saving confidential conversations for two reasons:

- the user chooses to not save the conversation, but can't be sure if other partners save it regardless

- the user chooses to save the conversation, but can't be sure if the tool will really do so because of other partners' choices

Either of the options above will lead to more end-user questions (and necessary UI to prevent those) than simply combining E2E and persistence in one option.