The difference for me is that, previously I knew I was multiple difficult steps away from having my browsing data uploaded to Google servers. That provided me a level of comfort that doesn't exist anymore. With the new method I'm one misclick away from giving everything to Google. Add on to this, Chrome has been increasingly pushy with its sign in prompts. There's no reason to think it won't eventually be equally pushy with its sync prompts.

For one thing they have completely different privacy policies. By signing into the chrome they are automatically forcing people to accept the privacy policy that is far less private than the when people aren't signed in.

This doesn't seem to be turning on Chrome Sync, so users aren't being forced into any privacy policy:

https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1044109898013765632

Read the actual privacy policy, not the tweet talking about it. Primary sources are always best.

> The personal information that Chrome stores won't be sent to Google unless you choose to store that data in your Google Account by signing in to Chrome.

That doesn't say "unless you enable sync", it says it changes "by signing in to Chrome". Since they're now forcing you to sign into chrome without your consent they are also forcing you to accept that they can send your data to their services without needing any additional permissions from you.

Literally the next sentence after the one you quoted is:

> Signing in enables Chrome’s synchronization feature.

This is no longer true, so it seems most likely that that entire paragraph is simply out of date.

Thanks, this is the first comment on the issue that actually made sense to me.