Why does the front-facing domain have anything to do with what data they can or cannot collect?
Because cookies are bound to a domain. So once Gmail moved to google.com/mail, the Gmail cookies started carrying over to the search on google.com, meaning that Google could correlate your search terms with your account.
Re:Why I’m done with Chrome
by SmellyGeekBoy on Monday September 24, 2018 @04:58AM
(#18056053)
Cookies
Re:Why I’m done with Chrome
by magicalhippo on Monday September 24, 2018 @07:23AM
(#18056732)
Wasn't that somewhat related to the trademark dispute?
The domain gmail.com became unavailable in Germany due to trademark disputes [...]
Re:Why I’m done with Chrome
by RobertRoberts on Monday September 24, 2018 @10:47AM
(#18058126)
If the Germany trademark issue was relevant to the moving from gmail.com to google.com/whatever is the case, why were we all allowed to have @gmail.com email addresses?
In Germany they used @googlemail.com addresses.
Re:Why I’m done with Chrome
by RobertRoberts on Monday September 24, 2018 @10:51PM
(#18063221)
I know that. I was merely pointing out that if gmail.com was the issue, then having [email protected] would also be an issue. But since it never has been, the issue in Germany has nothing (based on this simple logic) to do with Google changing the email access from gmail.com to google.com.
... and then they started giving away Google Analytics so every hit on every website could be recorded (by them), and then built Chrome, so that every hit on every website could be recorded (again by them).
To think we were so naïve.
Within a few months of Gmail going public it changed from gmail.com to gmail.google.com or google.com/gmail or some such thing, and I knew instantly they had bamboozled everyone.
That was years ago, the rest has been the expected trend.