The main thrust though, is that this doesn't actually solve anything for end users that the Google Chrome team says it does. There appears to be absolutely no benefit in turning this on.

Over the last year or so, it feels more and more like Google, as a company, is getting desperate. Like it feels the external tide of popular opinion turning against it. But rather than mend its ways, a decision has been made somewhere to slurp up as much information as possible as quickly and quietly as possible, before it all comes tumbling down around it.

I wonder if GDPR was the turning point. Even my boss, who on a computer literacy scale of Linda Lovelace to Ada Lovelace ranks near the bottom of the scale, asked me to explain GDPR to her.

I think the change happened shortly after Ruth Porat was brought on and the Alphabet reorganization was announced (Larry Page wanted to retire without having that be the headline). There was clearly a change in mandate to start monetizing more aggressively and you started seeing the ad load increase across all their properties. That all happened during a lull in Google's stock price. It started trending upwards after Porat signaled to investors that all the money pits would be cut back.

This ultimately affects Google's future growth and it's why you'll see Google do more such "desperate" moves like trying to become a military contractor, building its own iPhone-like phones, tracking users more aggressively, and I imagine android users will soon see os-wide ads, too.

Except they won't be OS-wide, they'll be Play Services wide and mandatory if you're an vendor including Play Services.

If you don't want Google's ads, you can go do your own thing on AOSP like Amazon and other largely-flopped attempts.

Yes it does, it solves the exact problem described right in the article. Before this change, there would be a seperate log-in process for Chrome versus every other google service (which normally all share your current login status). Now, your login status is shared between every google service including Chrome, as a layperson would expect. Previously people who wanted to be logged into Chrome AND other google services would have to complete the login process twice which could be confusing for novice users.

Chrome is not a Google service. It is a web browser. It should act like one.

If they looked at a slightly risque URL on their phone, would the average user expect Chrome on their laptop to autocomplete that URL?

His response ("syncing is expected") is completely on-point when talking about the PoLS. I disagree, obviously, and think syncing is scary voodoo magic. I don't see how you can say "users are unsophisticated and don't understand the difference between web sites and web browsers" and also say "users are sophisticated and expected config syncing".

Unfortunately, to get any further we have to test users.

I also just tried signing in to chrome (69.0.3497.100), and it tried to sync immediately again, so I'm not sure where the "sync is optional" idea comes from?

Sorry, not much of a Chrome user here. Why would I want to “sign in” to a web browser? I’ve been browsing the web successfully for decades without doing so. I don’t sign in to my text editor either.

It's not hard to imagine that this could be their reasoning around the change in the future.

After a bit of back and forth, I asked for a screenshot. They sent me a photo of the screen and it became apparent that they were clicking on this new avatar embedded in the browser chrome rather than the gmail app avatar below it.

I imagine they don’t care one way or the other.

If he came across this, I expect that he would definitely notice that something seemed unusual. Once it became clear what was happening, I expect he would switch away from Chrome.

Edit: To clarify, I care about whether Google knows where I've been online. That's why I don't use Chrome. I just don't think most people care.

Now that Google knows, who else can find out? Someone Google trusts? Someone that pays Google enough money?

Lets sell your browsing data to whoever wants to buy it. What kind of risks would that create for you and your family?

Every single person I've explained how much data Google et al's regularly collect has cared a lot. My mother's first comment after hearing what Android and Chrome collect was, "Why aren't the in jail?"

Unfortunately, most of these people continue to use Google's services because they often don't have a choice or are not aware of alternatives. Please, actually talk to people outside your bubble and get their actual opinion (which might require educating them about the specifics of what the tech is doing).

But if these things are unrelated, I guess we'll just have to chalk that up to Google's famously shitty product management and design skills.

You could always be logged in and not sync. You just had previously chosen to be logged in and synced.

By disabling syncing, you turned off a feature that you previously had to have opted in to.

I remember because it bothered me to have to wipe my passwords from some random pc I was using just because I wanted my bookmarks.

> This will sign you out of your Google accounts.

And sure enough, it signs you out of gmail and the browser. So it's sign in to the browser, or no gmail for you.

I know what I saw. I was logged in, then I wasn't after I turned off Sync. They may not be related technically, but in the UI they are part and parcel.

Thanks for correcting me!

So in theory your data should remain local

That doesn't sound very reassuring to me. Especially long term.

tbf, this is followed by

> This is my paraphrase

(Side note sort of related from another related article - apparently you can opt-out of the unified login, but the flag that lets you opt-out is broken as of chrome canary 71)