It /also/ wouldn't surprise me if it's exactly the way you describe.
In either scenario, it's equally bad.
In most fights between adding a user feature and protecting user privacy, if the feature cannot be added otherwise, feature wins. It's only "shady" if you're already assuming the feature vendor is a hostile actor.
The consistent Chrome experience enabled by logging the browser in is hells useful (especially in this era of mobile device + desktop device; no more having to remember if I bookmarked that article on my phone or my desktop or my work PC, etc.).
/Not/ protecting user privacy is always shady, regardless of who the actor is. When done knowingly, it's almost always hostile.
Once we assume that's not the decision that'll be made (because obviously), the question becomes whether the feature can be implemented at all while respecting user privacy.
And if the answer is yes, we can expect it to happen.
I don't subscribe to this school of thought, personally. I suppose that's where our differences lay.
What school of thought do you subscribe to? I had assumed that this
> /Not/ protecting user privacy is always shady
... being an absolutist statement, meant that you were open to the easiest way of protecting user privacy, which is "Don't increase the security surface area at all," i.e. add no new features.
I think it's pretty sad that nobody here has linked to it... It's as if the people who care about this stuff aren't the same ones who write and review code for a living...
On the other hand, a very large majority of the time that a programmer speculates on the internet about something that's obviously true about code I've written or am otherwise privy to, they're wrong
On the other other hand, most vague and fabricated statistics about anecdotal, speculative or subjective topics tend to have very little weight when making a point...
So I don't think the thought that any programmer would know this is a ridiculous edge case is one that holds any real weight here.
The likeliest point of introduction is where Google added account login to the browser itself. At that point, either ambiguity of specification or failure to test as though the user thinks Google is a privacy-hostile agency (while using a browser that allows them to login to Google) could have resulted in someone adding a special case to refrain from throwing the credentials away that keep the browser logged in that inadvertantly failed to throw the credentials away that keep a session logged in.
Wouldn't we be able to tell when they push the fix?
Best context I can give is the actual CL for the fix.
I call bullshit. Google is an evil company, this is nothing new.