Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up until about 2008. So many things have changed since then.
Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting off their blacklist, is literally impossible.
Then came Chrome and Android, which grew to collect so much information on people that it was genuinely baffling.
Then my agency work and work with previous Google employees telling me about Google sales tactics to SMBs in Adwords. Intentionally not focusing on ROI because they knew the companies had such high burn out rates. They would, and continue, to milk them for whatever they are worth. They know the company is statistically going to go out of business in a year, so just take them for whatever they are worth! Luckily agencies act as a middle man, if not for that, the abuse would be so much more widespread. But if you deal directly with Google ad sales (and this is something I never knew existed tbh) they will intentionally screw you if you are under a certain spend.
Now they have growing and creeping monopolies in advertising, and their only real competitors are Amazon and Facebook... which to me are both on or near the level of sleaze that Google has crept to.
Now things are accelerating, with Chrome's increasing intrusion, Android's increasing intrusion, deals with Chinese governments to stifle freedom of expression and speech. Google AMP being a closed system that's only goal is to push Google into controlling more of the web.
Add to that, let me preface that I am not a Trump voter and never will be and probably lean more towards the politics of Google leadership, but the video that leaked out (it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real new organization, maybe it would have been taken a lot more seriously) of the Google town hall also baffled me. I think Facebook might even take their moral obligation of objectivity more seriously than Google...and that's a serious problem. Algorithms can determine electoral outcomes, and Google is one of the top tech lobbyists in Washington. Doesn't that bother anyone?
This is no longer a company I can advocate anyone using. Unfortunately because of their monopoly status in advertising I have to deal with them.
I'll add my very recent negative experience with Google. I have a couple of apps on the Google Play that use Firebase analytics and crash reporting. This weekend both apps were removed by Google without any warnings. The issue was that apps were in "Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID" because by default Firebase collects Advertising ID. I don't really need Advertising ID in my app or my analytics and there is a way to opt out [1], but I think the way Google handled this is just wrong. Collecting information that most people probably don't care about and then removing apps without notice for basically their own default configuration.
You should appeal if what you're saying is indeed true. You're supposed to use advertising ID for any ad-related tracking - if you use something more sensitive instead (like IMEI) then you'll get taken down.
I think you misunderstood my comment. I don't want to collect that information. All I need is anonymous crash stacks and possibly some general statistics (number of users on various app versions and Android versions). Google was collecting extra information without me even being aware of it, until they removed my apps for the store. I want to collect as minimum information as possible for me to effectively maintain the apps. I have no use for personal information or any identifiers. But Google probably wants it and that's why Firebase collects it by default.
> Google was collecting extra information without me even being aware of it
I think the point is that you should be aware of it. It is your application after all. Yes, what Google does is weird, but the app developer needs to be more careful in general what 3rd party code they load.
On the other hand, I understand you. Probably you do your due diligence when you load some random dependency but you (like everyone else) used to expect better from Google. Not anymore I guess.
I mean, if you use a google library that uses a specific google feature, it’s kind of fair to assume that it’s not a violation of their privacy policy.
You don't get to act clueless if one of the libraries that you added to your application collects data without asking the user. I already said what Google does is weird.
Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article.
I've noticed the straight search results making a marked decline in quality over the past few months. If one of the keywords within your search is anything remotely profitable, it will drown out all other terms. Then the search results ended after ~4 pages.
Definitely changed from the Google I "grew up on."
> Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article.
That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". There is however a Wikipedia page for "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" which is exactly what appears in the Wikipedia box on the right or as the first Wikipedia article when you search for "right to bear arms", "right to guns" and "arms rights".
I have no reason to think it's some dark conspiracy, but it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms. Are there a lot of searches for common phrases where a Wikipedia page exists and Google returns a different Wikipedia page as the top item?
It's a bit like searching for "USA" and getting a result for "Canada"; just because the canonical wikipedia URL is "United_states" doesn't mean that a page about a different country is more relevant. :)
It is a conspiracy, if there’s proof of a conspiracy.
Put a finger on the scales, show us how it’s done.
Modeling this behavior, without tilting the scales completely is perhaps impossible.
I’m interested in seeing how such code could work, while scaling and not creating artifacts. I can’t think of anyway for such code to be deployed without breaking search and letting attackers gain even more
> it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms.
I totally agree, it could be as simple as the algorithm finding more usages of 'gun' and 'rights' on the Gun Control page than on the Right to Bear Arms page and basing its decision solely off that. However it could be as complex as skewed data in a deep learning model that takes in every users search term and subsequent selected result. No one really knows exactly how its decided except Google's own engineers.
The fact that most other, very similar search terms provide the expected results suggests to me that it is not an intentional misdirection, otherwise the other search terms about guns would also show the Gun Control page.
There is a "Gun Rights" page on Wikipedia (at least that's the slug,) Bing pulls it to the top of the results for that same query (along with advocacy groups.) While Google puts "Gun Control" at the top right. So, I see OP's point. I do have a hard time believing that is purely algorithmic.
I think you, and others, seem to ignore that deep learning bots produce what the data contains. The data maybe be skewed in one direction or another, as in, it may be the case that most content is for gun control and most users seek gun control content.
The philosophical question is if a search engine return what people want or should return return what is most biased for truth and informative.
> I think you, and others, seem to ignore that deep learning bots produce what the data [and the rules it uses] contains.
The bot uses data, sure, but like the humans it also--
* Chooses what data it uses based on...
* The rules that make up its processing which in turn are...
* Influenced by the peculiarities of its creator(s).
Those last two can't be emphasized enough. A subject matter expert, for example, will choose data differently from a layman, who will choose data differently from someone completely ignorant on the subject. Someone driven to keep certain data suppressed will choose data differently from someone driven to research the matter, who in turn will choose data differently than someone wholly disinterested in the topic. Unless a person builds a bot with a 'willingness' to question both its data and its own programming (and perhaps even its creator) to present the best linkage the web has to offer, all bots will be mere dummy proxies of the creator programming it.
He's not saying it's an issue that "right to keep and bear arms" is the top result on Bing/DuckDuckGo...it's that on Google it's not, it's "Gun Control" which is not the top result on Wikipedia nor is it necessarily a related term. The top organic result on Google is a tag page from NPR. How is that even possible for such a popular topic? That's something you'd expect from a rare term.
I know what he said, and I'm saying that the top Google result for Wikipedia was that entry in the organic results. As for everything else you said, it's meaningless.
I'm not sure I could define it as intentional and nefarious but I definitely find Google search results to be markedly worse over the last few years. It used to be really competent at finding specialist/technical results but lately it's gotten more generic and less useful. It's possible that's actually the nature of content creation these days, with everyone hyper optimising to please the Google search algorithm. But it's resulting in a less useful web for me. Certainly a less interesting one.
Same thing with Youtube, the algorithms seem to optimize for the lowest common denominator and all the interesting niche stuff is lost in thr noise.
Some of the solution is to do a better job of actively searching for good content instead of waiting for the algorithms to recommend it. But that itself has gotten harder too. Finding good content curators is hard.
Agreed - Particularly infuriating, is Google’s habit of returning search results with many missing terms, implying that they know whats best for me- ignoring a large part of my precisly crafted search input.
I know there is Verbatim option, but this is another slow step and does not work in combination with valuable time filter.
Wish there was an option to always use Verbatim and more default time filters such as 3 months, 6 months.
Absolutely. That is one of my biggest pet peeves. There must be a threshold where it would rather give you well ranked but worse matching results over low-ranked but well matching results. That threshold seems to be too low hence the generic garbage results for really specific terms.
I believe a major reason for the widely observed decline in Google's SERP quality is that SEOs got too good at gaming the system. The Panda and Penguin updates a few years ago kicked off a trend of prioritizing content from highly authoritative domains (e.g. big brands) even when that content is less relevant to your search query.
Google has been doubling down on this direction progressively--their justification being that people game the long tail by producing a lot of low quality, highly niched content.
There may be no real solution to this within the context of Google's PageRank-inspired algorithm and this may be an opportunity for disruption.
I can definitely see that being part of the issue. Having been a dev in the boiler room for a few heavy SEO reliant domains, it was remarkable the kind of low quality articles people would spin and Google would eat up, especially before Penguin and Panda. The blame can't all be put on Google, the SEO industry is a dirty place that consistently pushed out small producers of genuine content in order to make a buck.
It has become harder & harder to find videos on YouTube you know exist. Feels like the algorithm i geared to find new content rather to find what I'm looking for.
Interesting. I have the opposite experience. Searching to try and find _new_ content just presents me with videos/playlists I usually have already clicked/watched.
Regarding the "Gun Rights" fact box, the different results Bing and Google use here looks to be the results of an edit war[1] over how the page should redirect.
Judging by the text in the box, Google appears to be using a snapshot possibly around June 2018[2]
I don't see a redirect to "Gun Control" in the page history. It is currently a redirect to "Right to Keep and Bear Arms", yes; but before that, it was a disambiguation page that had a brief explanation of various meanings, and links to several other, more detailed pages. So if Google captured that, shouldn't it be linking to that disambiguation page?
Even then, one could imagine that the Google could somehow detect that it is not a particularly informative page, and pick the most likely disambiguation link out of it. Logically speaking, that would be first link in the list. But before the page was changed to be a pure redirect, it had the following blurb at the very beginning:
The term "'''Gun rights'''" may refer to:
* The legal concept of the [[right to keep and bear arms]]
* [[Gun control]], the set of laws or policies that regulate the
manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use
of firearms by civilians.
...
So, why would the algorithm pick the second link, specifically? And why hasn't it re-indexed the page since?
FWIW, I don't think this is the case of deliberate changing of search results. But I suspect that their algorithm is inadvertently picking up bias from somewhere else, and applying it here.
Is there a good site out there to analyze "edit war" pages of wikipedia?
I've always been curious of locked topics to see some type of analytics breakdown. The most hotly edited items are generally the things I'd most like to see surfaced.
Also, google shows the "Right to keep and bear arms" wikipedia article on the second place, however it adds "Jump to Gun violence and the politics of the right to bear arms" link.
When asked "gun rights", google added the link to the only section of the article discussing gun violence. They obviously manipulate their search results pushing political BS :-(
If you search for "United States inventors" you get the list you were probably expecting.
Google seems to like to include results appropriate for common phrases if you include only part of the phrases. My guess is that the "american" in "american inventors" brings in results for "african american inventors" too.
Imagine you were searching for 'american basketball player' and the selected individuals were predominately white. And on top of this you had guys like let's say Mike Dunleavy Jr. placed ahead of Michael Jordan for no apparent reason. Do you think this would be appropriate?
Yes, I have noticed that google search result are much worse the past three months, even for non political stuff. Top ten results are usually from big media corporations.
Gun control
Search results for "gun rights"
Gun control refers to any law, policy, practice or proposal that defines, restricts or limits the possession, production or modification, import, transportation, sale and/or use of firearms. The laws and policies governing gun control vary widely around the world. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the Republic of China, have very strict gun restrictions, while others, such as the United States, have relatively modest restrictions. Proponents of gun control generally believe that the widespread possession of guns can be dangerous. Wikipedia
Aren't these two statements a bit contradictory? e.g., the suggestion that they've editorialised "gun rights" to something (control) that would lead to less profitable results, but the statement that they doctor their setup to favour commercial enterprise?
Logged out of any Google account from a work IP address (not used for much personal searching) and I get the same result.
Info cards are not influenced by your account's history as far as I know. They are purely programmed by a combination of bots and hand tweaked responses. The hand tweaked responses come from a combination of user complaints/requests and internal pushes by engineers.
That's part of the issue, but Google also automatically extends your search terms with words that it believes are relevant to your search. I will also give certain words a higher relevance based on what ti believes you are really searching for. Unfortunately this often leads to search result pages full of entirely irrelevant results, while pages containing the exact words in your search term are few and far between, if they are shown at all.
This is my biggest gripe with Google's search engine. It used to be that you could specify exactly what you want to get and it would find it for you. Now it thinks it knows what I want better than I do, so it refuses to show me things I know exist and that every other search engine will find with very simple, straight-forward search terms.
Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article.
It is known that Google employees have the capability to skew search results politically, just not whether they do it in specific circumstances (of course it would be robustly denied)
Just a suspicion based on Eric Schmidt being so involved with Hillary’s campaign. But the link I posted shows that there are no technical barriers to doing it, and that doing it is openly discussed within Google
> Luckily agencies act as a middle man, if not for that, the abuse would be so much more widespread
I ran such an agency. As someone who is proficient in PPC, the AdSense sales team was inexcusably poor at their jobs. They'd offer to setup campaigns for free with thousands of barely relevant keywords and would push upping the budget past what was reasonable.
Their tactics were so bad for my clients that I stopped accepting their "free" help and did the campaigns in house. I hate to think how many agencies simply went along with their advice to the detriment of their clients.
If what I've been told by people that used to work on those very Google Adwords teams, it's not that they are "bad" at their job, it's that they are meant to meet a certain quota of spend and nothing like ROI etc matters. What's the solution to campaign doing badly? Up the budget! They know it's not optimal, their managers know it's not optimal, but the goal is for Google's bottom line. This stops once you reach a certain spend tier and they know the burn out rates for those companies improve and they want the longer term revenues. (This is also good for larger agencies, since they will also get the good treatment from being a premier partner.) The lower tier spends are basically "boiler rooms" peddling fake penny stocks. People trust them because "It's Google!" but that is so so far from the truth. Sometimes it's not even Google, it's a company they've outsourced to, and sometimes they even work in the same building as Google.
Doing there jobs basically entails increasing your spend: whether by broadening your keyword phrases, adding irrelevant keywords, expanding your geo-location region, or increasing your bids.
Worse is when you get billed for clicks for inactive campaigns, even ones that were never enabled.
Yes, the intention behind Chrome was very obvious pretty much from the start: it has to benefit Google by giving its web services an advantage over competition. I wrote about that seven years ago: https://adblockplus.org/blog/google-chrome-and-pre-installed...
Google already bullies hardware vendors that don't package Google services with Android devices...which is what Microsoft did in the 90s. They also bundle all their services...which is essentially the very thing that Microsoft ended up getting slapped for. Google gets a way with a lot. Apple does too, but Apple's reach is limited to when you leave their hardware, Google's is always with you. You can't escape unless you are just a very very savvy user, and even then they can still get your data at the most basic level using GCS.
I really really wish Microsoft or someone outside of the duopoly, were more powerful in the mobile and search space so people had a choice. I do have an Android phone, but only because Apple is so locked down that I essentially have to use their services, and I don't use Google services outside of their store...but I know just by having an Android phone Google is tracking me.
As for advertisers, I know for a fact that some SMBs/agencies don't serve on Bing, not because the traffic isn't there...but because it's hard to manage so many bids and pacing in so many different platforms. Google makes it so simple, even if the ROI is slightly lower by not using Bing, etc. It's maddening, it is certainly a very monopolistic company.
>Apple is so locked down that I essentially have to use their services
I want to touch on this because in my experience this is less true than it seems on the surface.
The contacts app and calendar app support carddav/caldav respectively- photos use the standard camera interface (mpd?) the things that suck are that you need to use Xcode to develop for it, and you need iTunes to put music on the default music player app (however using plex w/ sync has been my cross platform solution for a while- and honestly I don’t know many people who aren’t using Spotify)
On the one hand I understand the complaints about Apple's "walled garden," but I've pretty effortlessly connected to both Google Calendar and Exchange services. (And I don't use Apple's own Calendar app anyway, although I configure the calendars through the iOS system preferences so they integrate with all the Apple stuff relatively gracefully.) I do file syncing with Dropbox, which integrates with Apple's Files app pretty nicely as of iOS 11. I keep passwords in 1Password, which always integrated fairly well with iOS and does even better as of iOS 12. I get a lot of ebooks in DRM-free ePub format from various vendors and can just open them directly in iBooks. (I suppose using iTunes is still a problem, although iTunes Match and, now, Apple Music actually made syncing pretty painless for me. After the initial pain of moving from iTunes Match, which worked great, to Apple Music, which did...not...work great for its first year. But I digress.)
More apropos to the linked post, I trust Apple with my data rather more than most companies I deal with. They not only don't treat it as a profit center, they seem to prefer to minimize the amount of personally-identifiable and unencrypted information they deal with. I do still use some Google services, but I prefer to use Apple's equivalents when possible -- and I've been using Safari instead of Chrome for years. A lot of people think I'm nuts for that, but occasionally I feel a bit vindicated...
You don't have to use Google services with Android either.
For years I've used an Android phone with no Google account attached - I simply skipped the OOB assistant and then created an account pointing on my company's Exchange, where all my mail/calendaring/contacts were. For maps, I used Sygic, which you can purchase outside Play Store.
Yes, I did lose Google Play, Youtube, Hangouts, but exactly that was the intent - not using Google services. Today, it would be even easier, with the existence F-Droid providing third-party apps.
My biggest complaint is that I have to use Siri and can't change it to another AI assistant. I can't use a different launcher, etc. I will openly admit to being a Microsofty (just a user, not an employee) and want to use Microsoft based services like Cortana since all of my information is synced that way. Yes I can use Cortana on iOS, but Siri is always there as the default. With Android I can turn the Google assistant off entirely and make Cortana the default.
I'm fairly annoyed on Android that I can't uninstall some stock Google apps.
I have good hopes that pwa+wasm will change that. What killed windows mobile is the lack of apps. In a world where you have performant apps, that are completely os independant, and do not even need to be distributed through a gated store, it makes it a lot easier for a challenger to break through.
Not a chance IMO. One major reason why native apps work is platform integration - both from an HCI perspective as well as a technology one. PWA and WASM will never be able to achieve these things.
Google bullies hardware vendors, Apple is its own hardware vendor. That is the essential difference. If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made and sold, instead of twisting the arms of third parties they’d have been OK. There is a qualitative difference between dictating the terms of something you alone build and sell, and using your market dominance to dictate terms to everyone else.
I don't disagree. I really would love for Microsoft to make the "Microsoft Store" accept Android apps and launch a Surface Phone line that only they control...and if it takes off maybe OEMs could join in, if not, fine. I feel like they are the only company that can successfully do it...but even then Google services are so coupled with Android games/apps...and it doesn't solve the "walled garden" problem. Microsoft would still have a walled garden, which I'm generally against. I don't know the solution, but I certainly do not like the current duopoly or the problem of the walled garden. Maybe there could be two stores, one from the Microsoft repo and one that is a "Sideload store" that is just listings but the apps are hosted elsewhere to remove any legal implications for Microsoft or whoever.
i too would love to see ms take 'phone' seriously, and do a surface phone line similar to iphone. own the hardware stack top to bottom. we need a third major force to offset apple/google, and MS is one of the few that could fill that gap.
they did finally start to take ownership of experience with the surface stuff, and I'm tempted to move back to that world in 2019 with a surface book of some stripe.
>i too would love to see ms take 'phone' seriously
Nadella won't because of MS hate.
Lots of naive developers are drunk on the false open source android story and won't apps for their OS - e.g. snapchat founder refused to build an app for WP. And kept sending take down notices for community built clients. This is why MS keeps pursing web apps and "universal apps."
Ms spent at billions in payment (bribes) to developers to build WP apps, yet.
Microsoft of today would never have created Windows. They have tried and failed multiple times to turn Windows into a store only OS.
Their OS was unjailbreakable far more so than IOS. WP's inability to share apps is the major reason why WP failed in my own country. Even till today, people still beam android / windows apps.
Windows 10 auto updates is another clue that MS is clueless about data costs. I'll bet, more people left Windows for autoupdating than for being insecure.
AFAIR, they weren't doing WP on their own hardware. The end user experience on various WP was (as with many android devices) a mixed bag. Coupled with being perceived as 'late to the game', and people wanting to jump on the app-bandwagon but not having enough resources... WP never got mindshare.
PERSONALLY... I think MS could mount another shot at the phone market - but they'd have to be serious, commit long term, and be willing to lose out $ for a while to gain marketshare.
I don't recall them spending billions on getting WP apps built. If anything, the anecdotes I heard were mixed - both cheap funding of lots of stupid one-off apps to try to inflate numbers, but cheaping out on funding for established apps with existing users/communities. In neither case did I ever read about billions being spent in those pursuits.
Again, I think there's probably one more chance MS has to make a run for this - new leadership since the ballmer days, commitment to manage their own hardware, and a public commitment to long-term investment in that ecosystem... - lots of folks are waking up to the privacy issues in mobile - apple has a story, google doesn't have a terribly good one. Lots of smaller/secondtier players in ios world are fed up with 30% fees. MS could address privacy and fee issues, and attract/keep new market. But... we don't want another 'playsforsure/zune' situation. :/
I don't think privacy is a mass market appeal. Here's an experiment you could do. Stop a few random persons on the road or on the train and ask their opinion about equivax, Cambridge Analytica, and Chrome's recent privacy violations and I'm sure you'll get blank stares on 90 out of 100 people.
As for developer fees - the jumping CEO reduced the app registration fee. No one noticed. He gave the OS for free - OEMs didn't bite.
Nadella recently reduced the their store fee from 30% to 15%. And you didn't know about it.
I feel that focusing completely on consumers would get MS 95% of the push it needs. The wishes of external parties is what gave us the DRM, Youtube's content ID and much more - all anti-consumer.
Developers complained about losing revenue to piracy - voila. Microsoft built WP so that it was impossible to get apps outside the store.
Apple has "arguably" been about consumers and we can see where that led them. IMO, fuck everyone else, design consumer friendly stuff. At least that's how Google search, android, and gmail began.
> I don't think privacy is a mass market appeal. Here's an experiment you could do. Stop a few random persons on the road or on the train and ask their opinion about equivax, Cambridge Analytica, and Chrome's recent privacy violations and I'm sure you'll get blank stares on 90 out of 100 people.
But repeat the same experiment asking them about Facebook listening to their conversations (whether true or not, it's now believed) and about adverts tracking them around the web and those same people will start complaining vociferously and tell you how creepy it is.
Microsoft is investing into IoT now. I could see smartphones morph into different specialized wearable devices, which puts Microsoft ahead of themselves, once again (they are always early to the party without the best party favors).
Microsoft is a red herring. They should not be talked about in the same context as Google and Apple. They have no idea how to make an OS or desktop software, so much that Windows users have to work together to undo Microsoft's stupid decisions they make on managing Windows. Making a mobile OS, which will be much less user-manageable, would be a disaster for them. I feel bad for the few intelligent people working there.
Which is well-earned, they saved it for decades. What fueled their growth before, now is working against them.
> Lots of naive developers are drunk on the false open source android story
If you think leopard can change its spots, it's you who is naive. The arrogance with handling Windows 10 should tell you, that they didn't change; they will abuse their position when they think you have no other option. The "naive developers" as you call them know that and will not do anything to put Microsoft into that position.
> Ms spent at billions in payment (bribes) to developers to build WP apps, yet.
Yes, they did. They thought that their existing partners will help them. Fortunately, they were wrong.
> They have tried and failed multiple times to turn Windows into a store only OS.
Yes, developers giving Microsoft more power over themselves. What could possibly go wrong... It's a good thing they failed.
OS Store is not the thing that keeps Windows used.
> Their OS was unjailbreakable far more so than IOS.
That's another "feature" nobody asked for.
> Windows 10 auto updates is another clue that MS is clueless about data costs. I'll bet, more people left Windows for autoupdating than for being insecure.
As far as I know (which isn’t perfect knowledge by any means) MS has had a hardware division since 1982, it’s just that it was never their focus. IIRC Bill Gates famously didn’t want to become a major hardware vendor, but wanted to focus on the software. Certainly I’ve never heard of a ban or anything like it, and I was under the impression that dealership laws were essentially unique to cars. If you have some other information to the contrary I’d be happy to read it. Obviously if such a ban existed it was lifted before MS made things like the Zune, or Surface.
are you talking about device manufacturers or component manufacturers? for the latter, look at what happened to imagination when apple dropped them and then tell me with a straight face that wasn't bullying.
It wasn't bullying. Imagination was a one trick pony with, to mix clichés, all their eggs in one basket. They were always going to be screwed when Apple continued far enough down their predictable path to in-house silicon. The people with a clue all left (mostly to Apple) leaving behind shitty managers and the usual clueless offshore types who resorted to the court of public opinion via an embarrassing, needy blog full of vague threats of legal action. That's the closest it got to bullying, really.
Here's hoping that Trump in his second term hits the digital monopolies with the anti-trust legislation they have been flaunting for the last 10 years.
Just because they are somewhat closer to me socially doesn't mean I want to sell out my freedoms to them.
He could solve that problem by simply ceasing to say and do dumb things. I'm not convinced the media is out to get him, he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day. I wish the news were focused more on policy than politics (though not sure that would help him), but people like drama and news orgs like money.
> he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day
as much as I dislike trump, i do think some of the negative media coverage of him is over the top, and does its part in destroying credibility of real issues. my own gut would be on those '20 times/day' things, probably 5-10 of them are overblown or taken out of context (the 'fist bump' on 9/11 was overblown, imo, when you look at the complete footage and context).
I agree that it's over the top (mostly thinking CNN here) only due to the fact that it seems to be all they ever report on anymore. Some are overblown, it's true, but enough legitimate issues come up daily to fill the news cycle with headlines like "you won't believe what Trump did next!"
> but enough legitimate issues come up daily to fill the news cycle
agreed, but it becomes a bit of "boy who cried wolf!" If everything is 'over the top' and 'worst ever', etc, then nothing is.
there's legitimately enough to be covering about policy and real political issues at stake - the 'fist bump' coverage and 'outrage' from anyone was worse than trivial - it gives cover and legitimacy to the folks who are on the fence about 'fake news' charges.
>agreed, but it becomes a bit of "boy who cried wolf!" If everything is 'over the top' and 'worst ever', etc, then nothing is.
But should we just allow the normalization of such behavior? I don't think so; I think we should continue to call him out on it.
>there's legitimately enough to be covering about policy and real political issues at stake - the 'fist bump' coverage and 'outrage' from anyone was worse than trivial - it gives cover and legitimacy to the folks who are on the fence about 'fake news' charges.
> But should we just allow the normalization of such behavior? I don't think so; I think we should continue to call him out on it.
what behaviour?
let opinion journalism call him out for stuff that is opinionably bad. let fact-based news call him out on 'real' stuff. again, i go to the fist-bump thing (but the 'koi fish food' thing last year fits too) - there's no need for that to be covered by the same folks and with the same level of coverage as state of the union speeches or cabinet appointments.
I was excited by “Don’t be evil” back in the early days. But maybe they should’ve chosen “Don’t be stupid or evil” because their amnesia, arrogance and carelessness remind me of so many hilarious sad stories from the early days in the tech industry as recounted in this book which I own:
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters
"I can easily see" sounds like it's a hypothetical, but destruction of real value for short term monetary gain is plainly visible all around. I've probably ran into 1000s of real world examples.
I think it actually helps insulate Google from closer scrutiny of its monopoly position and deplorable business model. Why would any self-respecting country suffer an all-powerful ad-financed private Alphabet Agency? Because they think Evil is "on our side".
Google too shut down AdSense just a few weeks ago for a project I work on/for. We only use AdMob to serve ads as alternative monetization.
No warning, no reason given, no way to contact anymore. This is definitely not the right way to go about this.
When Gmail came out, I said to people "as long as it stays on gmail.com then they can't use email scraping with your search history. No privacy issues." (or minmal ones)
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.
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.
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?
I know that. I was merely pointing out that if gmail.com was the issue, then having youremail@gmail.com 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).
My good buddy was within circles of “Team L” back then and nagment always laughted when someone mention “dont do evil” mantra. Google never said they wont do evil, they just stated a fact in general. Similar like Subway says “eat fresh” and you think “oh i guess they have fresh subs” meanwhile just recently there was a case when someone sued Subway for chemicals used in their bread, and reasoned their lawsuit on fact they assumed Subway has fresh sandwitches, but actually Subway lawyers explained the slogan is for others and “in general”, not that they as a company produce or serve “fresh” subs themselves.
The privacy implications were widely discussed when Gmail launched, but then the media interest just faded out because people were apparently OK with it and Google promised to "do no evil". So here we are, 14 years later.
They did, for a few years. It was a bit scary, but also really good. It was really easy to test, if you sent an email discussing a weekend trip with some friends you'd immediately get hotel and flight ads for that destination. Actually quite useful...
> Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting off their blacklist, is literally impossible.
Same thing happened to me shortly after Adsense started up. They banned my account when I was 17/18 for clicking on my own ads, which I'd never done because I knew you'd get banned for it. I'm now 32, so in two years my Adsense account will have been banned for literally half my life.
If we'd ban targeted advertising, this would take away the perverse incentives, and we could help transform Google and other companies into something better. I'd say let's start with a petition.
It's kind of irritating that we're always trying to keep up with the latest version. In a way, it's actually putting the power into their hands. Making it easier for them to get away with sleazier stuff because the majority are on the most recent version.
And because everyone's on the latest version, it's harder for individuals to downgrade or stay on old versions for longer without getting obsoleted.
It's actually closing the web. The excuse for aggressive upgrades & auto-updates are mainly for security purposes, with the side benefit of reducing the work of web developers. But on the flip side, it's actually huge centralization move.
I think it was after the US election results, senior leadership was discussing with employees what it could mean for them, and what Google's stance would be. Quite reasonable for a company that is open to diversity to reassure their diverse workforce when a president who is explicitly against diversity is elected.
Typical Breitbart trying to create much ado about nothing, I've had similar "town hall" discussions in the UK since Brexit - "what does this mean for our employees? etc"
I don't agree that the content of the leaked video[0] was reasonable. Google essentially controls information, so they have tremendous power. Their staff have openly called to subvert democracy, which I think most reasonable people find incredibly dangerous. And no, I don't like Trump.
Also from an investing perspective, it’s important to know if the senior leadership turns into a sniveling mess when facing uh...adversity in the form of the political horse they backed losing an election.
Where did Google leadership call to subvert democracy? At no point in the video do they instruct or encourage employees to do that. They're discussing what Trump means for their employees, not for their customers
This is the main claim: "Google employees discussed how they could tweak the company's search-related functions to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, the WSJ said. The ideas were not implemented."
To me, that is not "subverting democracy." It is, however, taking an active political stance.
I respectfully and strongly disagree. A functioning democracy is fundamentally predicated on a well-informed electorate.
If the primary source of information is manipulated in the name of political activism, how can they become well-informed?
Sadly I must qualify this by saying I don't believe the general public in the West are well-informed, but that doesn't mean that ideal should be given up entirely.
> show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies
From you:
> fundamentally predicated on a well-informed electorate
Describe how anything in the parent statement fails to contribute to, or detracts from, a well-informed electorate. Both examples are involvement in the functioning of a democracy, not detracting from it.
Nor is any private party obligated to provide "equal coverage". That the level of "informed" goes up, but does not encapsulate information -you- think should be included, does not negate this.
The WSJ is unabashedly an outlet for conservative and GOP talking points. That is clear on its opinion page, and I know that somehow people trust its news pages, but the same editors control the rest of the publication, as does the owner of the WSJ and Fox News, Rupert Murdoch. I wouldn't trust their summary of something relating to a conservative talking point.
"Their staff have openly called to subvert democracy,"
The key here being "openly" and a specific call to "subvert democracy". None of this happened, and your source does not back up this claim in any way. These are apparently in internal only threads, and they were merely talking about tweaking search results.
Internal, private emails threads are objectively not "openly calling" for something and merely "tweaking search results" is not "subverting democracy" in any sane world.
> But if you deal directly with Google ad sales (and this is something I never knew existed tbh) they will intentionally screw you if you are under a certain spend.
I'm interested in this as well. My current company uses AdWords directly and is almost certainly below that "certain spend". I'm suspicious that we might be getting taken to the cleaners too, but not sure the co-founder would believe me.
Unfortunately the only way to really know is to have a PPC expert audit your account. IMO having a good in-house PPC person is crucial, or at least go through a reputably agency (as an in-house PPC expert can be pricey.) Even though agencies charge a service fee, your results will almost certainly outperform just using Google's in-house service or doing it yourself. There are also classes some people offer on the topic, which can help you tell if you are being had. I'm not saying it's going to happen every campaign, but it is a common practice.
I can't enumerate on it much more without likely making an error, as I am not on the PPC team myself. I know several people in the Michigan Ann Arbor hub at Google that have told me this directly.
> it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real news organization.
That right there is the issue. “Real” news organizations share ideological views and their choice of what to investigate is a result of that ideology. When a newsroom cheers or is despondent over an election result, it’s unrealistic to expect them to provide hard-hitting coverage that potentially undercuts their own biases.
The coverage of Russian “collusion” is a great example. Hillary Clinton’s people met with the ambassador of China as well as Russian officials during the campaign. But there was not even cursory coverage in mainstream media outlets or any investigation into Hillary’s campaign while similar alleged actions by members of the Trump campaign have led to a years long special prosecutor. I am not going to relitigate the collision case here, but alleged Trump collusion or alleged Clinton collusion would both be considered crimes, that Clinton didn’t win is immaterial since the crimes being alleged are collusion before the election. However, there hasn’t even been any cursory investigative reporting of the actions of the Clinton campaign despite secretly meeting with both Chinese and Russian officials. Just those meetings alone would be grounds for concern, but media outlets, in their disdain for Trump, ignored a potentially identical crime committed by Clinton’s campaign, not because it wasn’t newsworthy, but because it didn’t fit the ideological ambitions of many major “reputable” news outlets. I am not claiming Clinton did or didn’t collide; only that there was enough evidence to inspire at least some investigative reporting by the media — but the problem is that such reporting would weaken the “case” against Trump in terms of public opinion.
Keith Ellison a congressman with multiple, credible sexual assault accusations against him gets a pass in the media despite him running for Attorney General of Minnesota and he’s the deputy Chairman of the DNC. Yet, the media goes after the Kavanaugh story despite a far weaker accusation than the police-record supported claims against Ellison. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Again, I am not litigating the Kavanaugh case here, only pointing out that the media has a propensity to cover news with an intensity to suits an obvious agenda as opposed to covering news impartially.
With the Google politics situation, why would the “reputable” media care when it’s a sentiment they already share.
I was a contract journalist for Reuters from 1996-2002 and, in my opinion, journalism has declined prodigiously since then. It has become a click-bait driven industry that preys on tribalism and emotion. My first real exposure to the 24 hour news cycle was during Desert Storm and I remember the coverage of CNN was not only reputable, but explemplary. The NY Times was an extraordinary paper along with the Seattle PI, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe And Miami Herald. My old hometown paper where I interned before going to Reuters was also great — attacking left and right with equal aplomb, passion and fairness. But something happened along the way. We could blame Trump as is the fashion, but Trump was a product of this, not the cause. There have always been fringe media outlets like Breitbart, however they really didn’t have much of an audience because the majority of people of all political stripes had a reasonable trust in the major media outlets. The issue of media bias isn’t even one of specific stories and how they are written, but something far most sinister — the quiet influence of the assignment editor who decides what stories are even worth considering. The NY Times for example, well written, generally solid stories however, the real bias comes from what they choose not to cover. The Trump stories are certainly worth ink, but so are the stories about Clinton Foundation irregularities, quid pro quo arrangements with foreign governments, the Moroccan phosphate deals, Russian Uranium and campaign money laundering to the time of $84 million.
In full disclosure, I didn’t vote for Trump, didn’t support him at all, but I am a libertarian-leaning conservative frustrated that ridiculousness like modern Breitbart even needs to exists. (I say “modern” Breitbart because under Andrew Breitbart, it was actually a pretty decent new source, albeit from a right perspective — it was the conservative answer to the Huffington Post, though now, it’s pretty close to Infowars territory.
I apologize for the rant, but I agree, it’s a shame that fringe media has done more investigating into google than the “reputable” media.
> My first real exposure to the 24 hour news cycle was during Desert Storm and I remember the coverage of CNN was not only reputable, but explemplary
?!?!?! It's funny to see how different viewpoints can be. The CNN coverage of Iraq 1 (and 2) is often given as a textbook example of how pro-military propaganda can be achieved thanks to "embedding": News networks need images, the easiest way to get the most striking images is to be embedded within military units, the military are more than happy to comply, as long as they keep editorial control of what is published: win-win for both, but a definite loss for impartiality
Even as a middle school student I was amazed how “clean” they made the war seem. It was clear that the military had full control over the flow of information.
all serious presidential campaigns have some contact, especially after they win an election, with major world powers. the big difference is they'd run away and report it to the fbi et al if said world powers offered to help them in the election.
> However, there hasn’t even been any cursory investigative reporting of the actions of the Clinton campaign despite secretly meeting with both Chinese and Russian officials. Just those meetings alone would be grounds for concern, but media outlets, in their disdain for Trump, ignored a potentially identical crime committed by Clinton’s campaign, not because it wasn’t newsworthy, but because it didn’t fit the ideological ambitions of many major “reputable” news outlets.
It's not just the news media. The justice department seems to be ignoring it too.
I'd love to see specific sources that back up your claims about Hillary Clinton's 'secret meetings'.
And, on a more general note, I'm pretty astounded that you spend so much time railing against the bias of what we are obviously meant to infer is the left wing media without even acknowledging the existence the right wing media machine. And no, it isn't Brietbart and only Brietbart.
>Keith Ellison a congressman with multiple, credible sexual assault accusations against him gets a pass in the media despite
a) There are definitely some inconsistencies in the stories about what he did/did not, and after reading through a few articles on the subject, it doesn't exactly seem like there's very much concrete evidence at all. AND EVEN THEN, the allegations are not as far as I can in any way sexual assault allegations. And furthermore, I found a litany of sites discussing the situation on both side of the traditional spectrum.
Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.
I wish I could use it but it has serious performance problems on macOS. I tried and it was just terrible. (thought not all Mac users have problems, quite a number do, and Mozilla has an open issue asking for debugging logs from Macs to find the reasons).
I'm puzzled as to why people seem to dismiss the "built-in" browser. It's the fastest, smoothest, best integrated, and least power-hungry browser on the platform. I regularly use all three major browsers (for testing, I write web applications) and I consistently switch back to Safari for all my non-special browsing.
This past weekend I tried Safari again when I saw it updated to version 12. I was surprised to see that Apple deactivated my uBlock Origin plugin, saying it would slow the browser down. So now Safari is unusable and filled with ads, and there's nothing Apple provides to replace uBlock Origin. This is a total show-stopper for me.
It’s really just a suggestion to turn off some extensions. Haven’t bothered to figure out what triggers Safari to do that, but you can still run uBlock Origin on Safari 12 and it seems to work fine.
the new extensions model is ridiculously useless...
You need to build your extension in Xcode now, and for anything other than content blocking, the APIs are non existent...
for instance, you can't even close tabs!
I made an extremely simple extension using the new model around 2months - before I try migrating an older "actually useful" extension. But theres just no way its possible to migrate.
Apple doesn't care about browser extensions now, it seems they want everyone to move to the new model, so they can collect revenue on sales on ad blockers.
You didn’t reply to or contradict anything they said. You need Xcode to build extensions and Safari has a super limited API. Executing JS and CSS don’t address either.
> Apple doesn't care about browser extensions now, it seems they want everyone to move to the new model, so they can collect revenue on sales on ad blockers.
The web is terrible without a serious adblocker and the available alternatives (paid or not) are unable to take away the same amount of junk.
People will simply start using another browser.
You can turn it back on. Go to Preferences -> Extensions and check "uBlock Origin". I've been using Safari 12 since it came out and uBlock Origin works with it just fine.
I just use uBlock Origin anyway (basically ignore the message). I don't see a difference in performance with the plugin when I updated to v12 on my mid-2010 MBP (it's slow anyway, so /shrug).
same happened with Adguard and this was using non deprecated APIs (uBlock Origin was and is clearly using deprecated APIs). It seems for blocking stuff Apple changed the whole SDK on the browser!
I keep trying to use Safari as my main browser. I want to use it so bad.
I keep switching away from it due to lack of favicons and lack of extensions. I don't personally mind paying for a dev license to release an extension, but it definitely takes a toll on the extensions that get released.
For me the biggest reason not to use Safari was that I couldn't paste screen snippets or images from a clipboard (e.g. Web Whatsapp etc). But after your comment I tried and they seem to have implemented it. Maybe even in Safari 12.
Safari doesn't support WebGL2 and probably never will because of Apple's stance on OpenGL. Disqualifies it for me and I've had to tell customers that I can't support it, even if they'd pay for it.
It has the worst UX. It doesn't show favicons on tabs. It has the worst selection of extensions: https://redditenhancementsuite.com/safari/. Everything just seems to be worse than Firefox/Chrome from the developer tools to extension development (you need Xcode).
To use Safari, you pretty much need to decide that performance / battery life are more important than anything else which only describes my needs when I need to milk my battery when it hits 10% with no electric outlet in sight.
As a counterpoint; I think the Safari UI is the lightest and gets out of my way. I am I the only one who actually likes the lack of favicons? Very minimalist and gets out of the way to let me do my surfing.
It does have some ux benefits too. The "back gesture" works much better than on other browsers. Firefox gives no feedback, and chrome gives very poor feedback.
Safari lets you peek at the previous page, and makes it very obvious that you are about to go back, without any performance hit.
It also comes with reading mode, which chrome doesn't. Even with an ad blocker, many pages are still layed out in ways that can only be summed up as reader hostile.
So for reading and moving between pages, I feel like it beats both ffx and chrome. So I disagree with your "more important than anything else" part, but agree that performance and battery is among its top features, and if you don't care for that, safari does become a hard choice.
We all care about about battery life performance. This comments section is filled with people like me who want to use Safari and give it a serious try every once in a while for that exact reason.
But it needs more than that when my battery already lasts 6+ hours under heavy use and my laptop is plugged in almost all day anyways.
Perhaps you can see how a reading mode that we already had extensions for in other browsers and sexier prev/next gestures damn it with weak praise.
Well, it does show favicons on tabs (with the recent update). I'm not sure what you mean "everything seems to be worse", I haven't found this to be the case. As for extensions, there are indeed fewer Safari extensions than for other browsers. I checked and I regularly use only: 1Password, Ghostery, AdBlock and Harvest.
As I said, it provides the best performance, experience and battery life.
Strange. I almost exclusively use OSX (El Cap) and haven't had performance issues asides from needing to restart the browser once a month or so. Hopefully they get those problems resolved soon, the browser is super quick when it's working right.
Are you using a "scaled" resolution? If so, there's a bug in redrawing that pegs a core, and kills battery life.
It can be mitigated by setting
gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque = true
in about:config, but the fix is invasive, and has taken years to get prioritized and worked on. I've seen reports that it should finally be done in FF64 or 65.
I find that I cannot watch a YouTube video on my MacBook in Firefox for more than 10 seconds without the fans coming on at full throttle. This is one of the few reasons that I start up chrome, as strangely I can watch the same video in chrome without performance issues. I haven't had this issue on Firefox on PC
Google Sheets and Google Docs have been horrible on anything than Chrome for a while as well, and I guess they have no incentive to make that situation change. Firefox is dealing with it better than before I think, but I won’t hold my breath for parity to ever come.
Also, on my 2-year old MacBook Pro, the thing heats up pretty bad and the fans go on quite loud. It's terrible. I've actually never run any application on my laptop that performs as bad as Firefox, and that's saying something.
There is a significant (maybe 0.4-0.5 seconds?) lag between the cursor hovering over something and it's hover action (highlight, whatever) taking place.
Running my mouse down the list in about:config feels like I'm drunk.
As a follow-up, I did a complete reinstall of Firefox with a new profile, removed as much cruft as I could (pocket, etc.), upped the content process limit... and I feel like Firefox is much more usable. There's still some lag, but it's more on the order of 0.05 - 0.1 seconds.
Now if I could just get it to be reasonable about search engines...
GP claims that FF performance is terrible, which I cannot endorse (I guess GP might be having an actual issue), but I'll make a different claim: performance is not as good as Chrome (or maybe even Safari), despite all the accolades of FF Quantum, and my myriad attempts to switch to FF. The (at least perceived) inferiority of performance in addition to general UI ugliness makes it a no switch for me.
Sorry, if that was your thought, I’m afraid all design is probably lost on you. Which might be a blessing, since you can use whatever and can’t tell the difference anyway.
I gave up on Firefox on OS X for performance reasons and switched to Safari a while ago and it’s a decent browser. It has support for extensions that I use (ublock origin and 1Password), uses less battery than any other browser, and is fast
I hear about "FF performance issues on Mac" and I just don't get it.
I believe all of the people who report this, but it's not something I experience. Here's my usage pattern:
- 50+ hours in a browser each week
- Regular use of both FF and Chrome with very occasional use of Safari (I'm a developer of web apps)
- FF has been my primary browser for 15 years or so
- Used on a variety of Macs (2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2015 MBPs with 8-16GB RAM)
- Running uBlock Origin in all browsers FWIW
...so, anecdotal, but pretty extensive.
I never had major problems with FF in the pre-Quantum days. Chrome always felt snappier than FF, and Safari felt snappier than both, but the differences were not huge and FF was "fine." And now since Quantum, FF is on par with Chrome for me in general.
The one time FF feels like a pig for me is on Google-owned web apps like Gmail.
For many years, Gmail and Gsuite apps were lightning fast on FF. But in the last few years it has gotten slower and slower on everything but Chrome. Hmmm, wonder why.
- frame rate drops to 2-3 per second for 5-10 seconds when switching tabs
- causes other programs to not work properly because it is using too much CPU
I have tried uninstalling the browser and re-installing OS X but it didn't solve those issues. I read somewhere it is a bug that pops up when you have display resolution scaling on and I think it applies to me because I have two 4k monitors set at 2x scaling.
Anecdotally, I've never seen this, even when I had 1 external 4K and 1 external 2K connected. The whole OS was kind of sluggish at that point, but that was definitely asking a lot out of a puny integrated 3-year old laptop GPU so eh.
Just did a quick informal test with my current setup:
- MacOS High Sierra.
- 2015" MBP with no discrete GPU.
- Single 4K external monitor, 3008x1692 scaled resolution.
- uBlock is off.
With only a single blank tab open FF uses 0% CPU as expected. I opened three tabs: Facebook, Espn.com, and MSNBC.com. There was a brief flurry of CPU activity as the sites loaded, and FF's processes are now idling comfortably at 0-1%.
I repeated the process with Chrome and results were similar. One difference is that Chrome spawns 10x as many processes, but they seem to consume less memory each.
In both FF and Chrome, there's a palpable (500 or 750ms?) delay when switching tabs. In my experience a lot of Mac apps behave that way at scaled 4K resolutions.
I repeated this informal test in Safari and it "feels faster"; less CPU spike on initial site load and switching browser tabs feels close to instant.
Entirely anecdotal but I have noticed huge issues with Firefox when I hook my laptop up to a 4k display. My normal display is 1080p and no issues on the same machine.
Well, the last update to Adwords aka Google Ads is now a clunky piece of shit on Chrome and FF.
I don't know if Google has gone too far with the A/B split testing and are picking winners solely on a most ad revenue metric or if they abandoned UX testing altogether. I suppose it could be a bit of both. May be their decision making AI is secretly optimizing Google in a destructive direction.. who knows.
I love how Safari sips battery on OS X, but its performance is glacial in my experience. With Chrome I can, for example, type “was” and hit return at normal typing speed and expect the browser to have autopopulated “washingtonpost.com” from my history and take me there. With Safari on the same newer high end macbook pro, autopopulate takes up to a few seconds, so hitting return takes me to the page half of the time and searches for “was” the other half of the time. Pages seem to take longer until the first meaningful content loads, too.
I switched back to Chrome recently because the ublock origin port on Safari has been pretty broken recently. Setting third party domain blocking options in advanced mode doesn't seem to work any more (can't save the settings) and the extension doesn't seem to be maintained any more, judging by the github repo.
The one major thing that keeps me from Safari is keyword searching. It's a major part of my browsing workflow and makes me so much more productive. Last I knew, you could assign hotkeys to bookmarks, but I don't think you could assign keywords and you couldn't use %s as a placeholder.
At first, I was confused, because I've been using this feature in Safari for years. But then I remembered that years ago I installed an extension called "Omnikey" that provides this: http://marioestrada.github.io/safari-omnikey/, https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=ec.mario.omn.... If this is the only thing holding you back from using Safari, install the extension and switch. It's been working so well for years that I forgot it wasn't built in.
It does, if you enable it again (or reinstall it from the Safari Extensions directory). However, I get the feeling it will only last for this version, since they seem to be closing down on JavaScript extensions in general.
It’s been pretty good for me since Quantum. There is still a known issue with scaled monitor resolutions (which I do use), but it looks like fixes are in the pipeline.
Yep. And Google Voice runs horribly on iOS.. 20 second lag time to check messages, no joke. Earlier versions would freeze at the beginning of each character you type.
Makes me wonder if companies aren't just slowing down their competitors..
Also the parent comment is about Google Voice, which is not a browser and therefore is not constrained by Apple's restrictions on 3rd-party browser engines.
It's possible, but it's much more likely that off-platform teams just don't get much love from their orgs. iTunes on Windows comes to mind, for example.
I would believe this, were it not that the google voice app continues to break in new ways version to version. The latest loads a little faster and isn't freezing as much (still a 10 second load, better than a 40 seconds of nothing). But now when I reply to messages? 19/20 messages I've tried to send through GV show "Message failed to send".
The timestamps on call and message lists don’t update properly either. Switching playback source (earpiece to speaker) often doesn’t work. Screen shuts off even when voicemail is still playing.
Really? When I complained about Firefox performance on macOS, I was downvoted by a lot of people. It almost made me consider if the problem was PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). I am glad I'm not the only one. I wanted to love Firefox, but I can't because of this.
edit: reading all the comments in this thread, geez, I finally feel like I'm not a stupid user. :) The issues are real!
One reason is that the variety and number of extensions available is far lesser on Safari compared to Firefox. If someone is dependent on several extensions, then it may be a no-go.
It's my daily browser of choice, FWIW, but is no good for development. The React dev tool plugin, for instance, is only available on Chrome & Firefox.
I'm trying to switch to Firefox but it certainly doesn't feel as snappy as Chrome when doing dev work. I do like some of the tools though. Still undecided.
I use Safari for browsing and Chrome for development. Recent changes from Hangouts to Meet has also forced me to use Chrome for video chats.
I've never been a huge extension user (ad blockers and some development tools), so moving to Safari was easy. The big thing I missed was favicons, and those have been in the technology preview for awhile now.
I may explore FF for development, but I'm not sure there is a need since I've already relegated Chrome to a specific task.
This is it. Safari really doesn't compare to chrome/firefox in terms of good developer tools. They are there, but no where near as useful/powerful.
I have noticed a few quirks in Safari that I have to work around. Like not rendering things exactly the same way as chrome/firefox. Bit of a pain, but there is never anything that's really "broken".
What performance issues have you experienced? Chrome and Firefox run the same on my machine. The only time I switch to Chrome is when some Javascript developer has for some reason disabled click functionality in browsers besides Chrome. Most recently Bank of America has prevented click functionality on their cash back merchants.
I wanted to ditch Chrome, so I tried Firefox on macOS and it took 3-5 seconds to load most sites while they load in 0.5-1.0 seconds in Chrome. I tried uninstalling (including deleting all profile data) and re-installing to see if that helped. This is as far as I got in trying to install uBlock Origin: https://gyazo.com/5850d1b0955c42b857de4ab302c8149b Tried viewing source, but that page just came out blank too. I really want to like Firefox, but the release version feels like an alpha test to me...
Yeah, this is specific to macOS. I also use Firefox on my Linux machine, where it's supper snappy. Kind of strange, considering a lot of Mozilla employees seem to be on MacBooks.
I have perfomance issues on heavy JS websites. Facebook is almost unusable. But I have a bunch of extensions. If I try using a new profile (no extensions, default preferences, etc) it's nice and smooth.
I wish Firefox was as sleek, fast and no-nonsense as Safari on the Mac, which is my everyday browser. I vastly prefer the idea of an open browser that is not tightly coupled to a particular industry giant. And I wish Firefox actually had a viable Safari competitor on iOS, so that I can sync my state around.
Unfortunately, while Firefox has made significant leaps the last couple of years, it's still not a viable alternative to Safari for me. It doesn't feel particularly native (neither the "chrome" nor form controls etc.), and the UX is still clunky compared to native Mac-first apps.
One particular way in which Safari absolutely beats Firefox is the address bar. Most of the autocompletions that Safari provide are exactly what I want. As an example, if I type "mapq" into Safari, it suggests mapquest.com (a site I've never visited before, so this is not based on anything from my history). For Firefox, it suggests a Googles search for "mapquest", which is just stupid. Aside from suggesting web sites, Safari is superb at showing good results (Wikipedia is often a top hit), and it is awesome at providing autocompletions from my bookmarks and history.
Firefox also seems a bit lost when it comes to innovating, and keeps coming up with weak concepts that don't get any tractions; Personas comes to mind. Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to, and provides a "techie" solution to something that should just be invisible and default (i.e. all web sites should be "contained").
> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to
You might want to take a look at the Firefox Multi-Account Containers Add-on, it lets you set domains to always open in a given container, which cuts down on the micromanagement a lot once you get it "trained". [edit: This is not well-advertised, it's accessed through the context menu (right-click) on a page when you have it open in that container]
Container tabs has that feature built in, you can say that google.com and youtube.com always automatically should open in the same container.
It's still too difficult and cumbersome to use. I might want to have one tab with gmail signed in but another to make anonymous searches on Google, both are on google domains so i have to manually fiddle with the containers again. Then you click a link in an email or search result and you don't really know if this tab should be in the mail-container, in the default container or in the domain-matched container.
I know that feature is there, I was thinking that there could be a maintained list of domain groups you could subscribe to like filterlists. That way you wouldn't have to wait for a Facebook Container addon and a Google Container addon &c.
My biggest issue with containers is how to properly containerize Google itself. There are so many Google properties that are major parts of the web (many under the Google.com subdomain) that its the only major site I have left to no container by default.
It is funny how people have wildly different experiences. I mainly use firefox on MacOS, use Safari and chrome daily, but a tenth as much. I find firefox to be the best in every way, except maybe battery where safari wins. But I don't even notice that.
Well, people's experience of performance may to some extent be subjective or dependent on hardware. But the two problems I mentioned (very poor search box suggestions, and lack of native form controls) are objectively true. Maybe you just don't care about them. For me, going back to Firefox from Safari (or Chrome for that matter) is a step down in UX.
The facts might be objectively true, but not that they're a problem. I do not want domain names suggested by the browser. If I'm intending to go directly to a domain, I'll type it in.
I think you misunderstood my example. It doesn't autocomplete domain names, it shows search results. For example, type "Hacker" and the top match might be Hacker News. Type Newton and the top hit might be the Wikipedia page for Isaac Newton. And so on. Safari searches in a bunch of sources, not just Google.
Firefox, on the other hand, only shows you searches. It might offer "Isaac Newton" as a search suggestion, but that just triggers a search. It has no knowledge of other sources of information (beyond bookmarks and history).
I have terrible results with mobile safari suggesting items from my bookmarks. I constantly try to go to reddit and get auto completion of a different website that starts with ‘re’, repeatedly. I’ve tried to combat this to no avail.
> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to, and provides a "techie" solution to something that should just be invisible and default (i.e. all web sites should be "contained").
All websites contained would be an interesting default. With ways to “re-open current tab in container [X]” and “merge current tab with container [Y],” it would involve less micromanaging. That’s still not invisible, the container process and UX warrants plenty of thought.
I think container tabs conflates several things that won't be understandable to non-techies. One is privacy — preventing sites from abusing cross-site concerns such as cookies for tracking.
The other is what could be described as "focus" or "modality". A lot of people use windows as a poor man's workspace. For example, if I'm researching where to travel, I'll have a window open with tons of tabs — Google Flights, Kayak, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, all jammed into one "workspace". If I'm comparison shopping for one specific thing, there'd be Amazon, Jet, Etsy, eBay, etc. This is how people tend to work: Windows separate modes, tabs separate units of focus within that mode. And yet there's no browser that supports such a way of working. We have to accept that people now "live" within the Internet, and need to support different modes. Rather than think of the browser as a shell, why not think of the browser as a world in which you can open up different types of interacting with that world? For example, a Google Doc tab is not something that works very well as a tab. It's a document, representing its own modality. Slack is an app, also its own modality. A "workspace" is something else again. And so on. These are all "applications" in a classical sense, yet work within the context of a user.
I'm not suggesting a ChromeOS, just that what we think of as "the web" could be rethought in terms of different variations — ways to work — with the same thing.
Also, in terms of privacy, why are we still using cookies? Why are we "logging in" and "logging out" of web sites and having password managers that automatically fill out form fields? Why can't the web site negotiate its session with the browser ("I want an identity for gmail.com, please give me one"), which can already know who I am?
You probably have search suggestions in firefox turned off (they may be off by default?).
Works for me when I flip it on https://i.stack.imgur.com/0ZfvX.png . I keep it off because I don't like having my every keystroke in the address bar sent to Google.
Firefox only does search suggestions. In other words, anything you select from the suggestions just go to search results. Safari does that, too, but it also provides actual results. Very often the top hit is the right thing.
I'm not sure I completely understand what you dislike about container tabs.
For me, I find them very useful. It's convenient, for example, to be able to have two side-by-side Gmail tabs open. e.g. one for work email, and one for personal email.
As I commented elsewhere, they don't pass the "grandma test". They're a techie's solution to a problem that shouldn't really exist in the first place, if we'd got "logins" and privacy and so on right.
How many non-expert users actually want to be logged into multiple accounts on the same website at a time? Work + home email is the only use case that comes to mind, and Gmail at least has support for that built in.
In Firefox preferences, you can change the address bar's suggestions to list history/bookmark matches before search suggestions Or to remove search suggestions altogether.
Same, I always loved FF but had switched to Chrome maybe 2-3 years ago.
After this incident, I switched to FF Quantum permanently. It has come a long way and honestly I feel more at home in FF after a day than I did in Chrome after everything they've tacked on the browser.
Having read these threads, and personally knowing people in the Chrome team that read these threads, I am almost certain that Google will backtrack this. I know more than a dozen developers that switched from Chrome to FF Quantum this week.
I'm a huge fan too but it seems like Mozilla keeps dropping the ball on specific odd, "easy" things. The built-in screenshot tool makes it really easy to accidentally upload private information to a public inage sharing site and the Issue tracking a simple button relabeling has been open for months. They refuse to back down on Pocket integration that still leaves an awful taste in my mouth. The Library/Downloads windows have weird UX behaviors, should probably just be regular tabs, etc.
I never noticed the screenshot tool but, wow, that is some ugly piece of ui. The save button is called "Download" and the upload button is called "Save", holy crap. It sure comes off as someone at Mozilla going "I know, lets shove this new cloud enabled share-your-screenshots-with-everyone thing marketing came up with down every bodies throat via the screenshot tool!"
> It sure comes off as someone at Mozilla going "I know, lets shove this new cloud enabled share-your-screenshots-with-everyone thing marketing came up with down every bodies throat via the screenshot tool!"
This describes their approach to basically every new thing they come up with, and as a long time exclusive Firefox user it's the one thing I really don't like about it. I find it to be a great daily-driver browser but every now and then they'll try to cram some new garbage down your throat.
At least they don't surreptitiously start siphoning your data with without asking first, though.
Edit: As for the screenshot thing being poor, I agree that labeling the upload button 'Save' was quite a faux pas but at least the icons are pretty clear. The 'download' icon is the same as the download manager icon, and the upwards arrow pointing to a cloud is a reasonable representation of 'upload'. I might even use this thing someday.
I for one am glad that it exists, I love Pocket, the only annoyance I have is that the Firefox integration is not as complete as the Chrome add-on, probably because Firefox users keep bitching and moaning about it.
And maybe if that functionality were in an optional extension it would be easier to add features to it for the users that want it. It's not as if it being an add-on has, in any way, hampered your ability to use it in Chrome.
It's great that you like Pocket. I think it's a bit rude to act like it's unreasonable to have qualms about how it was added (certainly pre-Mozilla owning them) or to be confused about it's inclusion while things like RSS reading/folders, (a not-uncommon browser feature) are removed.
This entire conversation wouldn't need to happen. There wouldn't be unhappy users. There wouldn't be "another side" calling criticism "bitching". They'd get active, enthusiastic user feedback, etc, etc.
While I agree that maybe an official extension would have been better, most of the criticism I'm reading on HN is not warranted or in context, like the comment I'm replying to.
Whenever suggestions pop up for migrating from freaking Chrome, which if we are honest is the new IExplorer 6, to Firefox, somebody has to mention freaking Pocket. And it's tiresome and I don't think it is legitimate.
The presence of Pocket's integration in Firefox can't possibly be the reason for why somebody doesn't want to migrate from Chrome.
I’m a heavy RSS consumer, but I’m absolutely in a minority. RSS features according to Mozilla’s own telemetry are used by an extreme minority of users (I can’t find the exact figures but certainly less than 0.5% of people), and are a fairly large and unmaintained part of a codebase that’s undergoing extensive modification. I’d far rather Mozilla expose some APIs and let people make RSS-based extensions than have it built in and getting in the way of performance work.
It always was. When I started using Firefox it was an alternative to IE6. It was the browser you used if you were a web developer because it had things like Firebug (which Google copied and integrated into Chrome). Chrome didn't convert many Firefox users, it just did a much better job of converting IE users than Firefox ever did, but that's no surprise given that they could directly market it to users through google.com.
Chrome initially was faster than Firefox because it lacked features. This is a common pattern if you've been in this business long enough. Firefox itself was originally the fast-but-cut-down version of Mozilla. Like Firefox, Chrome quickly gained features and bloat and became just as slow as Firefox and everything before it.
Except, by default their primary product was the interface by which may of their users got targeted. They've sat on their hands on privacy for years, offering features for the informed minority, not protecting the majority of their users. It's been Safari and Brave that have started to show proper leadership in protecting users.
Recent attempts I've been making to help teach web developers about the dangers of referers, before they add more tracking pixels or leak reset password links get deleted by Mozilla technical writers because
"
We don't think it's appropriate to have a red warning banner at the tops of the pages. That kind of design element is one we try to avoid on MDN unless it's highlighting the very first thing you need to know about the item, which we don't think it is in this case, although we do appreciate that it is important."
Great idea, let's leave the wet floor warning as a note at the end of the corridor.
I'm a Mozillian who worked on MDN for 5 years, and now work on Firefox Privacy & Security. Most relevantly, I wrote the patch that implements strict-origin-when-cross-origin Referrer policy in Private Browsing Mode.
I certainly trust the MDN team to understand how to arrange their content to match their audience.
I also believe web developers should be more informed about the privacy & security issues of their work. The content you tried to add was verbose without any technical detail or links, and the MDN revision history isn't a great space for content discussion.
Have you tried filing a content bug? It's much easier to converse on bugzilla than thru edit battles.
Yeah I don't like to change habits, I have been using chrome for as long as it has been around, but when I read that last week I made the jump to firefox. Honestly, outside of not having the option to mute sites (as opposed to muting tabs), I can barely tell the difference. Also it makes it harder than chrome to manage site specific permissions. You have to go into the settings and add some exceptions instead of just changing a setting in top left corner while on the site. But it's otherwise a smooth transition.
I recently moved back to Firefox from Vivaldi. It's been a good move.
I feel like Firefox is back in the same boat it was in the 90s, but this time fighting Google Chrome instead of IE. But it's a bit different since you have to explicitly download Chrome. It's a bit different since you see an ad to download it right when you hit Google.
Not on Android, and not when you install some other piece of software that surreptitiously bundles Chrome and sets it to default: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1053973
I started using Firefox because I literally coudn't use Chrome anymore on my PC. Every time I opened Chrome it would hard lock and I needed to ctrl-alt-del, end-task. Even re-installing and clearing out cache and folders didn't help. I haven't been able to open Chrome for months. Using Firefox for 1 week was a bit of usability shock. But it's so awesome once you get used to it. Everything is indeed so much more thoughtful. Every feature.
I'd like to add that the Firefox DevTools are excellent now. For a long time there was this weird stuff with built-in devtools but-you-still-kinda-needed-FireBug and it was a mess (a sufficiently big mess to keep me on a random Blink-based browser), but these days it's just great.
Firefox is a truly great browser, they really made amazing improvements on all fronts in the last years. And I say this as someone who never used Firefox as their daily driver until half a year ago or so.
I use Firefox every now and then just for reading articles so my main browser doesn't get bloated with tabs, but it runs far from fantastic on my computer for some reason.
whenever a page loads all the elements move around for a second or two before they settle in their right place. that would crack me up if I had to put up with that all day
Biggest drawback to me after trying Firefox are the lack of simple profiles, as in Chrome, which let me separate work from personal from school when browsing, and the fact that all web development is done for Chrome. So many sites don't work correctly in Firefox that I eventually had to give up on it and move back.
Container tabs can do that from a isolation perspective, though bookmarks will be shared. I have "banking", "google services", "facebook", and the default for other stuff.
Thank you for this suggestion. I truly appreciate it. I just dumped Chrome on mobile and started using Firefox. While it is a fast browser it is nothing compared to Brave. I'm completely blown away by this browser. Now I'm going to install Brave on my desktop as well.
Development tools held me back and why I don't use Mozilla. Using Chrome dev tools on a daily basis keeps me stuck. Also having different profiles for work and personal is super useful (different bookmarks, logins, history that syncs) it's really slick. Does Brave offer this along with 1Password integration?
I really want to use Brave and I've tried it over the course of more than a year, here and there, and every time it crashes when I pin tabs, I haven't checked their bug reports, granted, but how is this not solved by now?
It's the best browser objectively, because it has tree style tabs, it's also a bad browser because it doesn't have a native support for tabs on the side.
My opinion is that the UX is no where near as polished. The history and bookmark features still look like they're from 10 years ago, and subtler things that are just given thought to because there seem to be dedicated UI/UX designer on the chrome team.
> The history and bookmark features still look like they're from 10 years ago
It's actually a selling point for me, I just can't stomach all the material design craps that Chrome forces on me where a page lost like 70% of usable space to useless whitespace.
I agree with both of you, really, both interfaces are shit. Chrome has that hideous whitespace that's wasteful even for touch interfaces, let alone for mouse+keyboard, and Firefox has a cumbersome and too basic interface. I can't even do an advanced search on my bookmarks.
I really want to like Firefox (or any of the alternative browsers mentioned here for that matter), but I frequently use my Surface in tablet mode and the only browsers with acceptable touch screen support on Windows are Edge and Chrome. Last I checked, this still didn't seem to be a priority for Firefox.
They've actually fixed a number of minor issues over the past year or so, but Firefox still doesn't support pinch zoom on Windows[1]. Being able to reorder tabs using the touchscreen would also be nice, but not as critical.
Reordering tabs via touch should work, it was fixed in Firefox 59 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362065). And yes, pinch zoom is not supported (we do text/reflowing zoom, but not mobile-style pinch zoom). It's something that's being worked on but there's a lot of dependencies in order to get it done.
Thanks -- I didn't realize that reordering tabs had been fixed. It only works on the active tab[1] and I guess I've only ever tried moving inactive tabs before. It's not perfect, but so far seems better than in Edge (which allows reordering of inactive tabs but is often rather janky) and Chrome (which has no ability to scroll the tab bar, so tabs quickly get uselessly tiny).
Ah, good point. You should still be able to reorder background tabs using the double-tap-drag gesture (touchdown, touchup, touchdown, touchmove). I haven't tried it recently though.
Google today is like the Microsoft of 10-15 years ago. Grossly dominant, arrogant, user-hostile, and thinking they're above the law. Microsoft got knocked off their perch and are a much better company today than they were 15 years ago. Google's turn to fall is rapidly approaching.
> Microsoft got knocked off their perch and are a much better company today than they were 15 years ago.
Microsoft didn't get knocked off their perch. They won the antitrust fight. Do you remember microsoft being broken apart? I don't.
And they aren't a much better company today. They are arguably an even bigger privacy threat since they are leveraging their ubiquitous OS to gather data and to sell ads.
> Google's turn to fall is rapidly approaching.
Microsoft never fell. They are ahead of google in the race to be the next trillion dollar company. I wouldn't hold my breath thinking that google is going to fall. Especially if you think microsoft "fell".
Google is much less adept at avoiding the ire of antitrust agencies, particularly under the current administration. Google is considerably more evil in the popular imagination at this point.
I was, and it seemed absurd at the time. Bundling IE with windows is no different than the current status quo, where Apple defaults to Safari, or Android defaults to a Chrome version.
Google's incredible monopoly in search looks like a large target.
There are other search engines and one can easily just type bing.com into their browser and set it as the default. Even on Chrome.
I'm not sure why you remember MS the way you do. There was a much much larger barrier for consumers to move to a different OS. If you owned a PC you pretty much had to run Windows. And MS made it extremely difficult to use a non-IE browser in the OS.
That doesn't mean I think they're innocent in all things but I don't see how their search market share is a monopoly target.
I have never used IE as my primary browser... I'm sort of amazed at anyone that does use the OS-native browser as their default, because it has almost always been an inferior choice.
For the vast majority of the target audience (i.e., not tech savvy mostly) Internet is the OS-native browser. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't know what a "browser" is in the first place.
As an analogy, during my childhood days when photocopiers came out in India they were mostly Xerox machines. So Xerox became a verb and has stayed a verb to this day. So much so that you will find "Xerox shops"[1] in all Indian cities and people won't understand what a photocopier shop is :-)
I think we just had a different set of ideals back then. I feel like maybe we got tired of fighting the same battles. Or maybe Microsoft was being judged more harshly on moral grounds because their software was also widely criticized for being crashy.
I mean, at the tail end of that period even South Park was lampooning the reliability of Windows. A lot of Google’s products work very well and dependably (well, provided they don’t murder the product), which maybe isolates them from that synergistic hate.
A lot people who are heavily right leaning in terms of policies does not like Google.
I even know a local Swedish podcaster that actively say DuckDuckGo instead of Google when relating to search. I completely understand this because I totally agree with the concept that Google has become politicized like a lot of companies unfortunately have become.
> and are a much better company today than they were 15 years ago
I disagree. Have you ever tried to deal with them? I've never experienced a company so hostile towards a customer. They are as money hungry as they were a decade ago, if not more.
Yeah, I actually understand the experience they're trying to create here, and it jives with the general goal of trying to create a consistent identity-based experience for all Google products.
However, this isn't for me (I used to be annoyed enough by my Android phone wanting to sync everything to Google's servers, and switched to an iPhone as a result), and what I hate is that Google never notified users of the change - I probably would have taken a long while to notice this if I hadn't heard about it on HN.
I do think your use case is common in family PCs and this is a nice solution for that. The issue is only on non-shared browsers.
The rant, which I agree, is against the trend. Google Chrome recent versions contain poor quality changes which seem to be incorporated only because they support Google end goals.
Most of the times people tolerate bad things if they get good quality products. I support Google Chrome data collection because I get the best browser. If I get bad UX changes (WWW removal), behavior change without UX information (this case) then my patience for the bad things quickly disappears.
For Windows 10 is also going this path. The trend for Windows 10 is bad quality and also dislike the privacy options so I'm moving to Ubuntu.
Files can be shared in a directory everyone has access to. On Unix-like system it doesn’t pose any problems (create a special group and assign permissions to it). I would suspect that on Windows you can do something similar (setting up a “D:” “drive”?).
Slowing things down... Logging in and out today is negligible in times of time spent. I’m not sure what other factors can come into play here for you in terms of a slow-down.
Having different OS users for different users seems to be a straightforward thing to do.
This + the screwup of hiding ".m." and ".www." substrings in URLs + the public threat of getting rid of URLs entirely = patience wearing very thin. Also, enabling webUSB and webMIDI by default earlier, both of which apparently unneccesarily exposed vulnerabilities makes me wonder who's in charge, marketing or security engineering?
Time and again [1] we've seen that a company's need to make money from user profiling and user data trumps broader privacy protections and wellness of its user base. Whenever these two seem to be in conflict and the company seems to be avoiding privacy intrusions out of benevolence, the truth is that the convergence is yet to happen. This is just a matter of when, and not if.
The broader public either doesn't understand this well or the companies take these decisions to cause fatigue and resignation among the public. The end result is that effectively nobody will care about these unless people who care (like the ones here, as one among many groups on the web) take some time to dissuade others from using these applications/platforms (be it Chrome or WhatsApp or Facebook or anything else).
An ungoogled Chromium is not the solution for this because maintaining a fork that stays true to other advancements takes a lot of effort and time, and in this case cannot be relied on either (unless, as someone pointed on another post here about ungoogled Chromium, you take the trouble of building it yourself every time spending hours).
For now, evangelize Mozilla Firefox and push anyone you know who uses Chrome to move out. Even if Google makes changes to this tracking feature because of backlash, it will only be a temporary holdout.
So I wanted to drop Chrome a while ago, and looked at Chromium. Apparently using the "no sync" version you can no longer even log into Gmail (or any other Google service) on the web. That was definitely the last straw for me losing trust in Google, but there's just no good alternative.
I'm not sure where to go from here because it seems pointless to even use Chromium if I can't remove Google from it and still be able to login to Gmail.
Are you referring to the chromium space options, or the browser market as a whole? I’ve never left Firefox and still find it to be a pleasant browser, one with which I’ve never felt really left out barring a few annoying bugs from time to time that are typically short lived.
I love Firefox in theory, it's just that in practice I've never been able to stick with it. One thing or another always leaves me running back to Chrome. It's possible that it's just my own bias and familiarity, but I'm not principled enough to endure an inferior experience in any way. Plus working in chrome dev tools all day long, you really miss it when you want to pop something open and look under the hood real quick, and I don't think Firefox is quite up to par there.
I use Firefox exclusively to browse, I use Chromium for local development.
It is true the Firefox's dev tools are a lot better now than they used to be - I use them regularly when I test sites cross browser. But they lack critical features like source editing and stack rewinding, and the tiny visual/layout improvements they've made are not enough to get over that. In Chromium, if I pause a script, I can edit a line code earlier in the function, resume, and Chromium will rewind the stack to that point and replay it forward with my changes.
It is insanely useful, hands down the single tool that I use most often. Stuff like that blows Firefox's dev tools out of the water, because it turns out that I debug Javascript more often than I debug Grid layouts.
A while back I looked into whether or not anyone at Mozilla was working on something comparable, and there was somebody. But then everything went silent and I don't know the status anymore. I've been wondering for multiple years now why this kind of stuff isn't higher priority than new Grid tools or color selectors or whatever.
Firefox's dev tools are way behind Chrome's in basic functionality, even if the user experience is otherwise excellent. You can't even set breakpoints on DOM elements. I would disagree with anyone who claims that they're even remotely comparable tools at this point.
> Plus working in chrome dev tools all day long, you really miss it when you want to pop something open and look under the hood real quick, and I don't think Firefox is quite up to par there
Based on what? What did you try to do and couldn't? Or is your complaint - like the rest of your comment says - that you weren't immediately familiar with the UI, you didn't bother learning, and then decided it was the browser's fault?
How long did it take originally for you to learn the Chrome tools and how long have you given Firefox?
Protip: when you want to sell someone on something, a response of "you're doing it wrong, you're the problem" generally doesn't work.
It's a pretty widely held thing that FF's dev tools don't feel as smooth or well thought out as Chrome's, which is frustrating because FF (really, FireBug, unless you count the weird IE stuff) pretty much _made_ the concept of browser tools great.
I'd love to use FF again too, but for me the blocker is the UI and battery drain. 's why I just use Safari.
> Protip: when you want to sell someone on something, a response of "you're doing it wrong, you're the problem" generally doesn't work.
I agree, but how is this relevant to my comment? I didn't say the GP did anything wrong - I asked them what they did. Not nearly the same thing.
> It's a pretty widely held thing that FF's dev tools don't feel as smooth or well thought out as Chrome's
There are a large number of groups with widely held beliefs where said beliefs don't stand up to scrutiny. "It doesn't feel like Chrome" is not a belief that doubles as valid criticism because it's not actionable. Its sole purpose is to complain about things while making sure nobody can ever act on them because it's so vague.
> for me the blocker is the UI and battery drain
While "the UI" fits in to the category above, battery drain is an actual, specific, measurable and actionable complaint. So please, more of the latter, less of the former.
Stack rewinding, code editing/saving, breakpoints on DOM subtree and attribute modifications, the ability to search for requests via response text (very useful when reverse-engineering APIs), breakpoints on XHR requests, event listener breakpoints.
These are not things that Firefox just does differently, they're features that Firefox just doesn't have.
Firefox's dev tools aren't bad in and of themselves. The UX is fine, and getting better. I don't know if other people have opinions about memory tools or profiling -- I don't all that much.
I guess Firefox's dev tools look prettier, and they do have some features that Chrome doesn't. But Firefox features tend to trend more towards, "here's a cool thing like the ability to debug shaders". Chrome's trend more towards, "here's a useful thing like the ability to debug Javascript."
Container tabs just makes up for lack of easy profile switching (at least on macOS, not sure about Windows or Linux), which was in Chrome for years. Even after it came, I gave it a try and found it pretty cumbersome.
(Before I get you-can-do-this-and-that replies, I know Profile Manager exists, and that's an ugly hack: macOS users should not need to run multiple copies of the same app bundle.)
No, container tabs are fundamentally different than just supporting different profiles, in that how it extends that concept allows for a whole new mode of use. Container tabs allows for domains to be tagged to always (or sometimes, with a prompt) open in a specific container, so after you've correctly configured it, you don't ever have to switch profiles. If I click a link to Amazon, it opens in my Amazon/shopping container. If I open a link to Goodreads, it does the same. If I open a link to any of the banking sites I need to use for different car/house/card payments, that automatically goes in it's own container.
The big thing that's different with container tabs is that after you set it up (which is done little by little as you decide to open something in a specific tab and then mark it to always open there), it's not something you actively manage, it passively does what you want. That's why it's so different.
Having every site be it's own container (which is also a mode Firefox supports, to my knowledge) would be slightly more passive, but also likely cause problems with some sites that use multiple domains, so I think container tabs is a good compromise (for now) that allows good compartmentalization while also allowing escape hatches for sires that require it.
If you think different profiles is comprable to container tabs, you haven't really understood how to use container tabs, or possibly even what container tabs are for.
Firefox's developer tools are quite powerful, I'd recommend trying them for a bit and getting used to working with them.
If you ultimately do want to keep using chrome for the dev tools, you can switch your primary browser to ff and use Chromium (without signing in at all) just for that purpose. There's no reason you have to use your primary browser for your web development work.
I would love to do this. However the warnings signs have blared into a real crisis: Google Docs has a stranglehold on “work”, in the broadest sense of the term, the way Microsoft Office once did. Until documents are decoupled from corporate lock-in on a mass scale, I’m personally stuck & likely many others are.
No it doesn't! When you use GMail, you understand that Google have some potential sight of your emails and you accept that because that's how it works.
What you DIDN'T sign up for is Chrome, which can see every site you have every visited, sending all of that info to Google as well to perhaps start targetting some different ads at you. I'm sure that would work well if one of your housemates had visited a dodgy site, which then picks up some suspect ads when you are doing online shopping with your girlfriend.
Maybe switch to Firefox and use their accounts toggle feature. It lets you separate out sessions for particular sites. It’s not “chromium” but it works well for what you are asking for as far as I can tell.
>Would you mind to explain how using gmail is fine but having to log in into chrome is not?
Well, I've sort of just accepted that Google has all of my personal data at this point. I trust them with data that I want to explicitly give up for the sake of convenience. Anything I type into Gmail I can accept as becoming essentially public record.
However, that doesn't extend to passively collected browsing data. It creeps the shit out of me that my private browsing history could be associated to my real life identity and other PII by someone at Google.
I use both ProtonMail and FastMail for different purposes, and am considering switching my FastMail account to the main one. It may not be as well integrated, but that's kindof a boon. GMail's new user interface is _really_ clunky. (I know I can switch to classic mode, but I'd rather just switch to something else entirely.)
I used to self-host because I could run really strict spam filtering. Unfortunately Sonic dropped their plans to offer static IPs and reverse DNS with their fiber products so I'm stuck with using their servers as a smarthost at least. Can't say I enjoy it (especially with their all-day outage this week), but it does give me a chance to at least easily run aggressive spamassasin filters.
I have a self-hosted domain too, with docker-mailserver, but only for less important email. For important communications I really worry about ending up on a spam list somewhere and landing directly in people's spam box, plus there are potential downtime concerns, so I stick to GSuite for that.
I've had a couple occasions where things have disappeared into the void. This was, of course, after moving away from a static IP (thanks Sonic). On the inbound side, I've had repeated delivery problems with Sonic blackholing mail from some financial institutions.
If you're really set on a Chrome-like browser, there's ungoogled chromium. Otherwise, I guess Firefox is the only truly free choice at this point, and even that includes DRM to be able to cope with sites like Netflix.
Edit: actually, there should be more browsers that I don't know about because I haven't really looked around anymore since choosing Firefox a decade ago. Is anything as well-supported (in terms of proper rendering and security, as well as being FOSS / privacy-conscious) that I should look at other than ungoogled chromium?
Brave and Vivaldi are both based on Chromium and have packaged, non-Google distributions.
I'm posting this comment on Brave, having switched over last week for most of my personal browsing. Generally like it a lot; there are a couple warts (it won't open S3 URLs from the AWS web interface, for example), but it does most of what I need in a browser.
Vivaldi still has Google features like search and safebrowsing which report everything you type into the URL bar and every site you visit to Google by default. Simply "not packaged by Google" doesn't guarantee non-Google.
You can interact with SafeSearch in one of two ways: by sending a URL hash to Google, or by downloading the list of URLs and performing your checks locally.
As a replacement for Chrome on your PC, Brave takes the second approach, and performs the evaluation locally (pulling down a fresh list every so often for up-to-date comparisons). You'll have to check with Vivaldi on which approach they take.
Brave has all of the phone-home-to-Google logic removed. If you ever spot anything at all that gives you concern, do feel free to let us know.
I just spotted something after updating Brave this evening. Included in the update was the version bump to Chromium 69 - and when I re-launched Brave, there was a popup saying "Here are the new features in Chrome 69", and clicking on it took me to a Google-hosted page listing all the ways in which Chrome 69 phones home for a safer, faster, more convenient browsing experience.
After having just posted here, it was...disconcerting. I'd like to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, but you may want to check a fresh update & relaunch from 0.23 to 0.24. I doubt I could reproduce (I've already clicked past it, and it was only on the first re-launch), but for a moment I was pretty confused about what browser was open (in fact, the only reason I'm certain it's Brave is because I just double-checked my Chrome and it's still on 0.68). Brave 0.24, V8 6.9.427.23, rev f657f15, macOS x64 (10.11.6 El Capitan), OS Release 15.6.0, Brave Sync v1.4.2, libchromiumcontent 69.0.3497.100.
Firefox currently downloads the (Google Widevine) DRM blob automatically. Firefox will prompt you before using the DRM blob to play video, but you have two options if you don't want it on your computer:
* Or you can install one of Mozilla's "EME-free" builds of Firefox. The only difference between regular and "EME-free" builds is the default value of the "Play DRM-controlled content" option.
From what I've read, Mozilla had some agreement with Google to keep all the data from their tracking stuff silo'ed so it wasn't aggregated with other data and wasn't used for anything besides showing back to Mozilla people.
and
They're now (and have been for more than a year) respecting DNT, removing the GA code so that you don't make any requests to google if you have that enabled.
And blocked site list, right? I forgot the name but there is this anti-phishing and -malware list with 40% false-positives that Firefox uses and is maintained by Google.
Well, with Firefox I have a separate issue which is that I never know when an update will include default-enabled integration with Pocket, a phone service, or some other startup that's scratched Mozilla's back in the past six months. So Firefox isn't a replacement. Also I was badly burned by Firefox removing support for XUL extensions, and refuse to depend on that browser again. I have serious misgivings with how Firefox is managed. You're not being helpful since you know I know about Firefox, and my question is about Chrome.
They ditched proprietary extensions in favor of an open spec than any other browser can use... I mean WebExtensions are here to stay and for the greater good. I can't understand blind hatred towards a move towards an open source alternative.
As for Firefox including Pocket, they own Pocket for starters, and it's less annoying than Edge or Chrome pushing their analytics filled services. There's a lot less cruft on Firefox than in other browsers. If I really wanted I could use one of the GNU forks of Firefox, though I'm not sure how much more privacy conscious they may be aside from a bunch of brand rework.
For me it was early on during the time where Chrome was new. First they didn't support plugins so adblockers were not working so I'd see ads and pop ups everywhere. Next they did support adblockers but they sucked due to API limitations. I realized then that they were primarily an ad company, I know the adblockers have somewhat improved for Chrome but I went back to Firefox and never bothered again. I only use Chrome / Chromium for web development.
For those who've switched over to Firefox recently and find Youtube inexplicably slow, it's "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome." [0]
I'm on the Polymer team at Google. We've been helping the YouTube team, who's been doing a ton of work to update to the final v1 version of the webcomponent specs. So far it's a bit neck and neck between Firefox launching version 63 with native web component support (eta October) and YouTube switching the main desktop app over.
These are new standards, and there were a number of breaking changes from the v0 specs to v1. It's a lot of code to update, but we're working super hard to get all of Google onto v1.
fwiw if you read the rest of that thread on Twitter it explains that Youtube is not using Shadow DOM v0, the slowness is likely related to polyfills for HTML Imports, and the next version of Polymer no longer uses those to resolve issues like this.
Microsoft left IE6 stagnant. They didn't "abuse their position" other than through inactivity.
Google is actively involved in the standardization process, and moved Youtube over to a new API too prematurely (v0 of a spec). Now that v1 has been standardized, they're updating to that instead.
These are opposite problems. Microsoft got complacent whereas Google moved too fast.
It's more of an OS issue here. Google doesn't view Android as a separate line of business. It's merely a moat for the search business. There's no way for an OS to be a moat for another business without abusing the OS.
Oddly enough I haven't had too many issues with YouTube's slowness (as a Firefox user). I mean, it's slow, but "tolerable". It's the new Gmail that's horrifically slow now. It takes a good 20 seconds to get to the point where I can interact with it, and then each interaction takes another 10 seconds.
I mean, polymer also broke most of the chromecast functionality in google's own browser to the point that I have to use ?disable_polymer=1 to really use it at all from a browser (really I mostly just use it from my phone now), so this doesn't seem terribly surprising by comparison.
I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history.
They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.
Google's culture breeds internal arrogance and blindness to outside concerns. Arguing with Google people about issues with their products is approximately as effective as arguing with a brick wall.
This is the culture of having hundreds of millions of users. One user asking for something is just a data point and you have to rely on user research and surveys to know what users really want on average. But surveys have their blind spots as well.
The thing is, as a developer without having access to user research, all I know is what I want, and as a developer I assume I'm atypical. Whether it corresponds to what anyone else wants is questionable.
The opposite of this is people who assume that whatever they personally want is Obviously the Right Thing For All Users. You will find that attitude everywhere on the Internet. And that has its own flaws.
Wouldn't it make Google people to think when opened HN they found top 3 as it is for now - "1. Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration", "2. Why I’m done with Chrome", "3. News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder"?
I stopped using Chrome when I wanted to have downloads automatically save to the desktop (no dialog).
Turned out, there was a 2 year old open bug on the missing feature, in which Google UX engineers repeatedly argued allowing the save location to be changed was counter to the desired user experience.
I switched to Firefox the next day and haven't touched Chrome since.
Was that a long time ago? Chrome has supported the option of a fixed download location for many years. I don't remember it ever not having that option, in all the time I've used it.
Correction: I think it was the ability to turn off the in-window "downloaded file bar" pop-up, which could(?) only be dismissed by manually closing it.
There are a lot of different bug reports out there asking for a flag, and apparently the Chrome team added one, then disabled it a few patches latter.
I forget what I was doing at the time (downloading PDFs for a uni course?). But it was a pain in the ass, of dubious utility anyway, and the cavalier UX attitude of "father knows best" left a really bad taste.
This may be true, but it's definitely not unique to Google. I know some well-meaning leftists who work for the leading Social Network and don't see any contradiction in that.
I could imagine a high-flying company having entitled employees, I just don't see the qualitative difference between this or that company. Please enlighten me if I'm missing the point.
And lest I sound arrogant myself: I once worked in Pharma and made my peace with the price vs R&D logic.
Well, every day there is more and more evidence ahoyt how
R&D excuses in relation to the price later are that, excuses to win more money and they do not share the real investments numbers
Ummm, leftism has a long history of invasive mass surveillance and questionable social engineering practices, so I don’t really see the contradiction here...
Well, most of the fighting against "invasive mass surveillance and questionable social engineering practices" has also been done by leftists, so there's that...
Centrist average Joes usually don't care about such things, and right wingers applaud them to help the police and such.
As for libertarians they are against them when it's by the government, but fine with them when a private company (even one the size of a small nation) does it as part of a "voluntary" employment contract.
To me spectrum implies a single dimension, i.e. the spectrum of light is just based on wavelength. But this metaphor doesn't really fit with politics, which at best can be reduced to two dimensions (in my opinion), and realistically is a lot more.
Realistically the left/right spectrum is orthogonal to the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum. Classic liberalism is, I think, more aligned with the right but also profoundly anti-authoritarian. Similarly, the left has a proud tradition of supporting individual liberty but also a strong tradition of suppressing it in favour of collective power.
Corporations of all stripes tend towards authoritarianism though, in my view. It is a natural structure when you have agents using someone else's capital.
It's not a matter of arrogance but of money. You have to understand when it comes to google, you are the product, not the customer. Google's real customers are big ad buyers. They listen to large ad buyers. Look how quickly they "cleaned" up search results and youtube videos when ad buyers complained.
Us complaining to google about poor treatment is like sheep complaining to shepherds or vegetables complaining to the farmer about poor treatment. Nobody would care. But if the shepherd or farmer's customers complained, they would listen very closely because it affects their bottom line.
Especially now that google has a monopoly position on search and online videos, they have even less reason to care about what the products ( you and me ) say.
This feature doesn’t enable sync. That’s something that members of the Chrome team have been patiently trying to explain to Matthew Green on Twitter for several days now.
Did you even read the article? He stated several times that the problem isn’t that sync is or isn’t enabled after the change; it’s the silent push of an update that directly violates user consent, and it widens the mouth of the user funnel-trap by quite a lot.
Also, the fact that they've gone from "The user decides when to log in, and when to sync" to "We decide when to log in but the user decides when to sync" doesn't inspire trust that they won't soon move to "We decide when to log in or sync".
It doesn't for _now_. Which is no small part of his point. The next step is to automatically turn on sync etc, which is an easier step now people will start to be used to the idea they're automatically signed in to stuff in Chrome.
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.
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.
It's not GDPR. If anything, GDPR will help undo some of this as test cases in the EU are litigated.
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.
I think it was also more advertisers switching to facebook and new ones giving fb ads a try first and not even considering Google ads (btw the rebranding from Google adworfs is another sign that Google is losing new advertisers to FB and yet another thing pointing to that desperation).
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.
> The main thrust though, is that this doesn't actually solve anything for end users that the Google Chrome team says it does.
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.
We could apply the principle of least astonishment to get a feel for correct behaviour without resorting to sterile arguments about what proportion of users understand the difference between a web site and a web browser.
If they looked at a slightly risque URL on their phone, would the average user expect Chrome on their laptop to autocomplete that URL?
The current behavior does not activate syncing by default in spite of the slippery slope arguments being made here. Furthermore i think most users would in fact expect syncing like that to work with minimal configuration in this day and age.
Please be civil with people who have a different perspective. The implication that the opposing position is outmoded is not a logical argument, it's an insulting one. "In this day and age," I'd think we could learn to be less dismissive of people.
Well he was replying to me and I didn't read him as uncivil at all.
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.
If I’m not mistaken, this also ensures that when you sign out of Gmail, you are signed out of Chrome (no?). That seems like a win for user privacy, insofar as it addresses the likely failure mode of mistakenly leaving the browser signed in after signing out of the website.
No. Pauses sync but doesn't sign out Chrome. So a person could still see your history/bookmarks/passwords in the logged-in browser. They just can't wipe your cloud data (which I think was the same before this update).
Yes I was thinking about chrome profiles. My mistake. But from what I remember, when you choose to log out, Chrome prompts you if you want to wipe your local data. So logging out locally allows you to protect some data. I think there was a way to log out remotely (tricky/weird way), though again without the local-wipe prompt.
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?
> there would be a seperate log-in process for Chrome versus every other google service (which normally all share your current login status).
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.
I understand the privacy concerns, but I find it very useful as I go between desktop and laptop often. It syncs bookmarks, history, tabs, settings, autofill, extensions, etc.. There have been plugins for this stuff for decades as well, so it is something that people find useful.
"We had to enable the sync by default because it was causing confusion with people that are already signed in and are expecting to have all their info in sync".
It's not hard to imagine that this could be their reasoning around the change in the future.
It shows a big blue banner (or is it a button? I don't dare click it) announcing the current state as "Sync as <username>". If the developers need to explain this repeatedly over twitter to a professional, what impression do you think normal users who don't follow a niche twitter discussion get?
I received a call from a client complaining about no longer being able to switch between their gmail accounts (which you normally do by clicking on your avatar in the top right corner of the gmail app on desktop).
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.
My father is a retired biochemist, inventor, and small-business owner. He does not use Twitter.
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.
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).
I’m sure people at FaceBook said the same smug things until they crossed a line they never saw coming, and now it’s all congressional hearings and “heartfelt” apologies. It’s true, you can dick a lot of people over for a long time, but you’re just breeding backlash. It will come, in waves, and if your history is defined by a kind of arrogant dismissal of their concerns you’ll be screwed.
Yes, but that's because they are uninformed about the humongous amount of data they're voluntarily handing out and how much can be deducted about their day-to-day lives using that data. If they'd know, like - really properly understand, I suspect that they might not be so eager to hand it over.
Sync and log in are two unrelated settings. They were never related
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.
For now. The next step in the dark pattern is to note the "User confusion that arises when chrome is logged in to the account, but the data is not synced", and automatically turn on sync.
I’m wondering where the source of truth for the sync setting is stored. If I enable sync on one chrome browser — then in another chrome browser on another device log into gmail (triggering chrome login) — will browser history sync be enabled on that second device?
(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)
I switched to Firefox some years ago but still dabbled with Chrome, up until FF introduced multi-account containers that is.
Performance results always seem to be subjective, but in my opinion Quantum made FF an absolute beast, even when running the usual lot of security add-ons like NoScript, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc.
However, Firefox Containers I would argue is the number one feature from a usability standpoint. Being able to wall off cookies/supercookies, trackers, and work with multiple identities simultaneously in tabs (especially when using Google services) changes the entire relationship one has with the browser account, website accounts, bookmarks, and productivity.
Containers is one of many Firefox test pilot projects that are really thoughtful (FF Send is another). Pair that with great cross-device compatibility, Firefox Focus for mobile and the general granularity of about:config and you have yourself a browser you can both trust and call your own.
It also doesn't hurt that Mozilla isn't evil; all things considered.
Yes that's true. I referenced Focus more as a nod to their development of a lightweight privacy-focused mobile browser without bells and whistles, and marketing it next to their regular mobile browser with equal attention.
Notably though, Focus is on track to move away from it's Chromium roots:
"The switch from Chrome WebView to Gecko doesn’t seem to be performance related. Instead, the reason has to do with the core goal of FireFox Focus in the first place: privacy. Mozilla has found a reason to believe that the Chrome WebView engine can leak someone’s data. So in the spirit of maintaining data privacy, the team behind Firefox Focus has decided to switch to the Gecko engine." [0,1]
I switched to firefox (linux) several years ago for my main browser and I couldn't be happer. I also run chromium when some webpage isn't working in firefox (rare) or when I need to use my companies LastPass account (I avoid LastPass in firefox because that plugin sucks balls), but I never use chromium for google services. I run all google services in a "google" multi-account container in firefox.
No, I mean that I don't want the plugin operating unless I need it to be operating. And maybe the plugin is better now, but it used to agressively autofill my passwords into forms that were not password forms, and agressively ask me questions I did not want to be bothered answering.
Google is incentivized to do this, they make good money off of it. It’s boring and true. They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit.
Until then use browsers like Firefox or Safari where the incentive to be creepy is far smaller.
> They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit
Which as we know from things like Facebook, that limit will never be reached. These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about. Even we software engineers barely understand the scope of what Google is capable of. It's going to take a principled stance from within the industry to push back against the encroachment of these corporations on personal privacy.
> These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about.
Or perhaps your preference is a minority opinion, and most people will trade privacy for convenience even when fully informed and aware of Google's behavior
>Or perhaps your preference is a minority opinion, and most people will trade privacy for convenience even when fully informed and aware of Google's behavior
That's kind of my whole point. Regular people don't really understand the implications of what's possible with all this data even when you tell them exactly what's happening, and so they gladly give it up in the name of convenience. They don't realize it has value, and is dangerous in the hands of bad actors when aggregated in large amounts. It's going to take people on the inside growing a spine and standing up for the rights of all users over advancing the monopoly on private data for whatever web based surveillance apparatus they're currently being paid to work on.
If Google's decision-making processes were as blatantly short-sighted as you seem to make them out to be, they would have prevented ad blockers years ago.
Another wrinkle with this: if your account is with a private G Suite instance, logging into the browser can have a profound effect since it will apply any management policies. This will probably be sold as a security enhancement - you can’t access your organizations data without active management (at least, if you’re using Chrome), but for users with access to multiple G Suite domains, this will become a real nuisance.
When I last had to do it, adding a managed G Suite account to Chrome warns the user that it will allow the browser to be controlled by the organization. It would make sense that this same warning would show up in this scenario.
the argument of consistency between logged-in account and browser account makes total sense from a UX point of view. Even for power users it's sometimes confusing why you have to log in twice.
And yes, of course if you're not logged in this chrome then this problem doesn't apply but most people are actually logged in and the article just skims over that.
* Where were all these cryptography engineering folk when Google decided that it didn't have to ask any permissions to install autoupdates to Chrome?
* Subsequently, instructions were published on how to disable the autoupdate — published by Google itself, mind you — yet somehow after some time has passed, the same versions of Chrome that were supposed to have stopped looking for updates were somehow able to magically automatically update themselves in the end after a number of releases anyways — so much for the browser being secure against remote execution attacks by a powerful-enough party!
BTW, if you think Brave is any better, they refused to disable the autoupdate. https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/1877 TBH, between the lines, I got the impression that it's part of the business plan, where an outdated browser is basically worthless to them as an investment anyways, so, spending any engineering resources on such causes is fundamentally not worth it. Who cares about the good-will of the user if there are so few alternatives anyways?! So, I basically stopped using Brave at that point, as I didn't feel like being the product.
Mozilla may have gone away with asking for your permission to download and install the update as well, but at least there's still a clear setting in the interface which lets you be the boss, and, compared to the quirks that Brave may offer, at least once configured, you do know they won't go behind your back to do the dirty work anyways.
Granted, Mozilla's had their own issues and some apps / sites may have become as dependent on Chrome as sites were on IE way back when. But given Google's flexing their control muscles over the last few years, a clean break is probably the better long term solution.
Question: How do I sign extensions I wrote for myself so I can actually use them, without uploading a copy of the extension somewhere? That's my roadblocker right now. I don't know how to migrate make my own extensions work on my own system without uploading them to other people's servers. (Yes, I want Firefox stable. I don't want to run a buggy browser.)
You can run either Firefox ESR or the unbranded builds [1] if you want unsigned extensions, but I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla?
Then I have the exact same problem when support dies in the coming months though.
> or the unbranded builds [1]
Interesting, so does this mean that if I want stable builds, I'd have to manually update to the exact unbranded counterpart of that stable version?
> I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla?
I guess because I really don't see what business they have forcing me to upload my extensions to their servers? Same reason why people don't like uploading Chrome stuff to Google servers?
~~~~~~~~~~~
Edit:
I'm trying out the unbranded builds and running into a problem when I try to use my existing profile: disabling signature checking doesn't work. However, it works on a fresh profile. Not sure what the problem is...
> Then I have the exact same problem when support dies in the coming months though.
Good news! Even Firefox ESR 60 always you to disable the mandatory signature checks by setting the "xpinstall.signatures.required" pref = false. The Mozilla add-on wiki was a little unclear, so I just manually verified that the "xpinstall.signatures.required" pref works correctly in Firefox ESR 60. :)
I know this is exactly what you're trying to avoid, but could you upload an example unsigned extension? I'll try to figure it out, could be a bug somewhere.
Thank you for offering to help! I actually just figured out how to fix it right now myself. The solution is to delete the following lines in prefs.js, then restart unbranded-Firefox twice:
The first start takes longer, so I can tell it's resetting something internally (not sure what). However, the second restart is what makes it start working. Not sure why.
Edit:
For anyone else trying to auto-obtain the latest stable Firefox nightly, here's a hacky command (change for your OS as needed):
Glad to hear you worked it out, good luck! Looking around there are a few levels of cache around whether addons are enabled, I guess those are what you need to clear it.
It's a temporary hack, but you might also want to look at temporarily loading extensions with about:debugging, this works even in official release.
fwiw even Nightly is quite stable these days, I can't remember when it last kept me from getting work done. And the addt'l telemetry is just a pref away.
When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. At that point, it's better to move to an alternative browser, it's not worth it to fight it with hacks. If too many people use the escape hatch, they'll remove it.
It seems as though the needed escape hatch is a browser that simply CAN'T send info about you back to home base. Firefox might qualify, but I don't know for sure, and I don't want that to be our only option. There's a lot of great engineering that goes into Chrome.
So I'm wondering: Is enough code open sourced to make it possible for an organization such as Apache, GNU, or whatever, to create a sanitized fork of each new version of Chrome? This would be a version of Chrome with no privileged party other than its user. Every other party would be limited to the same set of features (cookies, local storage, etc.) that apply to all 2nd parties.
You might want to look into the Brave browser (https://brave.com), which is a commercial browser based on the Chromium code, funded by a micropayments idea, which tries to generally be more privacy-sensitive than the Google version.
As for a fully open-source version: here's a fairly recent summary (2017) of what's in Chrome and not in Chromium (the open-sourced subset):
There are other omissions that could get in the way of general usability; chromium also omits some proprietary licensed codecs, including the mp3 support.
However, Google synch support, etc, is left in -- and if you desire to keep that out, maintaining the patch set that does it without cooperation from upstream could be a hassle. Whenever they refactor of update the integration between synch and the rest of the browser, you need to make corresponding changes in the patch set that cuts all that out -- and at a fairly rapid pace, too, lest you find yourself unable to ship an urgent security update.
So, it's doable -- but at a price in usability, and doing it right requires some kind of continual effort. Which is what Brave is, in effect, trying to arrange with their payments-based funding scheme. And even a very capable person trying to do the project solo, on a volunteer basis, would be putting themselves at risk of burnout.
Does one really want to associate themselves with Brendan Eich though? Brave is what he has been building after being ejected from Mozilla.
While Brendan has built some interesting and useful things including Javascript, he is apparently poisonous enough to cause three of Mozilla's board members to resign, including a founding executive of Yahoo, the former CEO of AVG, and the former CEO of Mozilla Corp (from 2008 to 2010).
The disagreements were about strategy and mobile experience, so not enough to call someone poisonous. Place Yahoo, AVG, and Moz Corp against Brendan's co-founder status and JavaScript.
The other toxic drama was about a 1000$ political donation. Very sad to see an unpopular view used to paint someone as a monster. If democratic political views are enough to kill someones career, it is more a sign of the toxicity of today's social media and activism than a character judgment.
> Does one really want to associate themselves with Brendan Eich though?
No, not really. Not a good political idea to align yourself with the black sheep. With all the tars and feathers he just looks weird.
Though it also works in his favor: Brave is popular amongst the alt-right and technical-minded early adopters. They see it more as character assassination and SJW corporate culture taking desperate vengeance for Trump's win.
> Is enough code open sourced to make it possible for an organization such as Apache, GNU, or whatever, to create a sanitized fork of each new version of Chrome?
> Qt WebEngine uses code from the Chromium project. However, it is not containing all of Chrome/Chromium: Binary files are stripped out. Auxiliary services that talk to Google platforms are stripped out. The codebase is modularized to allow use of system libraries like OpenSSL. We do update to the latest Chromium version in use before a Qt release.
Exactly. I'll go further in saying a system or software should be considered insecure if it connects to Internet and wasn't designed/implemented with strong security. That's most stuff.
That's a red herring. We're not discussing a security bug -- the system is working as designed. The problem is that the goal is not desirable, and the standards and code are complex to the point that an independent implementation is intractable.
This doesn't answer your question, but I thought I'd mention: A lot of great engineering goes into Firefox too. I really think you ought to try the version of Firefox that enables WebRender by default, when it comes out. I've been using it in Nightly on Mac, and it's seriously worth trying.
That was also my argument against all the "hacks" people posted online against Windows 10 tracking. Most of them were short-lived because Microsoft had an incentive to stop them from being used in the next update of Windows.
> When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you.
I would say that when you're looking for escape hatches, you know the defaults don't match your personal preferences. I understand why some people don't like combined login. However, I personally prefer it, and I guess that the decision to add it was made on the basis of believing that most people would feel like I do, or at worst feel neutral.
Based on all the discussions I've had or seen with Google developers, they added it based on the basis of believing that most people should feel that you do, or at worst won't notice. It's unlikely that they considered privacy concerns, above and beyond "we can be trusted so it's fine".
I don't know who you are or whether you have had conversations with the people who are responsible for the feature. All I can say is that that does not match my perception of the typical way of doing things at Google, as someone who has been working there for a while. That said, I do not sit close to where this feature was built, so maybe they do things differently over there.
I know. I was just trying to help another poor soul like myself in the interim of figuring out how to switch. For me at least, it's very nontrivial work.
Maybe they've revised the flag, but the flag did not disable the feature as much as the text might lead you to believe. My comment from a couple weeks ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17943524
Thanks for letting me know! For some reason I don't see that on my toolbar, though I haven't tried creating a new profile. I'm on Chrome 68 on Windows, if that might explain anything?
Your comment is aggressively presumptive (and wrongly so) so I'm not inclined to respond directly. You can browse my last few comments if you're genuinely interested.
I agree with Matthew that the supposed problem this is solving doesn't seem to be an issue for the case where no one is logged in to Chrome. In addition it seems to me as if it has a non-invasive solution:
If A is signed in to Chrome, and the user then signs into gmail as B, sign A out of Chrome, perhaps with a notification telling them what to do.
Is it just me who wishes all the organisations supporting user rights banded together and hit the market as a viable 3rd ecosystem of products?
All the Linux vendors, all the distributed social media (PeerTube, mastodon, hubzilla), all the private search engines like duckduckgo, all the open source hardware like Purism...
Imagine them doing an EU and pooling all their resources to produce a coherent yet distributed, open and free ecosystem with a browser by Firefox, search by DDG, OS by Linux, phone by Purism, etc...
They could cross-support each other's efforts, promote eacother etc.
I'd live there instead of Google/Microsoft/Facebook world.
The missing piece IMO is funding, but that may be something that the crypto-currency world could fill.
Not sure what the road to that world looks like, but we definitely need a contender because all of the major tech companies have become disturbingly anti-consumer.
Ubuntu's (failed) Kickstarter raised 12.8 million to build a phone which seems like a lot
Purism raised something like 2.5 and are using it to develop their first phone, and it seems to be going great, on track for April release.
Ubuntu etc are making money and doing good work.
While that's great, I think you're right. That for example, GNOME releases don't have nearly as much goodies as say Mac OS, because they're working with drastically less money and employees.
Take Firefox OS or Ubuntu touch. The amount of money being pumped into iOS and Android must be absolutely incredible. How do these open source vendors compete with the billions of platform investment from these giants?
They just end up with an interior product, so they end up with no market share.
Some bright lights are Ubuntu and duckduckgo, they're profitable and have their niches.
I think I'm suggesting they band together because that can only increase adoption amongst them all - if for example Firefox had duckduckgo as default, and Linux had Firefox as default, that would help those services quite a bit.
I guess though, that if Firefox is targeting mass adoption, they'll have more luck with Google as default. Which is sad.
Firefox here I come. Google’s update, to automatically take an action on my computer that I specifically don’t want, is an egregious misuse of technology. This is what Microsoft might have done in the early 2000’s for which they were rightfully vilified.
I thought that even if "evil" can't be well-defined, its general meaning probably encouraged a culture that tried to focus on ethics. When your leader says that trying not to be evil is "stupid", it has a different effect on the culture.
It was never removed from the code. You seem to think it was, and that the media attention made them add it back.
Try to find a snapshot of the code that does not include it (I can only find snapshots with it, so that won't suffice as proof).
About Eric Schmidt (who I won't defend) the full quote and context ("a casual jokey interview"):
> "The idea was that we don't quite know what evil is, but if we have a rule that says don't be evil, then employees can say, I think that's evil," Schmidt said. "Now, when I showed up, I thought this was the stupidest rule ever, because there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something." In the end, though, he believes it has worked, by giving employees a way to point out things they find unethical.
Subtle but it is there: The former CEO does not think that doing no evil is stupid, he thinks using a rule like that, without properly defining evil was stupid. Then he changed his mind.
Compare with the JSLint license that states: "the Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." You can find that rule stupid and vague, while acting like Mother Theresa.
> "As Google (and some others) interpret it, this additional requirement constitutes a vague use restriction and thus makes the license non-free. Chris [DiBona] explained that if I were to remove that line from the license and 'return to a proper open source license that we support,' then jsmin-php could stay on Google Code.
When you think of money as “intermediary token of value”, this makes a lot of sense. If you have a love of money, you will naturally tend towards whatever has the highest money-in-to-value-out ratio. With Google, however, the user is the product, so Google only want to put as much value in as to make sure the user stays. And yes, that does result in a good and polished browser, but only because it’s what keeps users from going to another one.
I use Google Chrome very casually, mostly for development exactly for the very same privacy concerns as people have so I stopped using the Google Account integration for a long time explicitly because of these worries. I was extremely surprised to randomly see the browser logged into the account I use for YouTube.
As a user this is greatly worrying to me. I want my browser to not do anything like this without my explicit consent -- especially since I knowingly avoided doing it... I moved out as much of my digital identity from the Google Cloud as I could. I obviously can't escape needing to use YouTube, but everything can't be perfect.
I gotta be honest, I have some worries regarding Firefox, too. Too often they have pulled shady things and got into bad with terrible people. (the unwanted advertising stuff being auto-downloaded for Mr. Robot, the "fake news detector" thing, etc. etc.)
I find it extremely important to have good, independent open source alternatives to commercial web browsers and each step like this is a step towards one interest trying to take over the core of our internet experience. Pretty scary.
I’ve recently launched an experiment to get off of google. I can’t say I had any real reason other than curiosity. I have some privacy concerns but can’t say that was the main driver here. I think I just looked at my laptop, phone, etc and thought about how prevalent google code was in my life. It was my navigator, my file store, my calebdar, my email, my search engine and my browser. It knows everything about me.
That said I have started migrating from the ecosystem. I’m using safari for the web. Duck duck go for search, and Apple for maps. So far results are a mixed bag but I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I’m hoping to get completely off of google in the next 3-6 months as long as viable alternatives that respect privacy exist.
I’m reading all this and was commenting to my wife we should stop using Chrome, then felt really foolish because I remembered we have Google Fiber. I’m not sure what to do about that. I’m also not sure if it’s something I should worry about or not, are there different rules on what Google can do as my ISP vs as my web browser?
What bothered me with Chrome is that when you log in the sync functionality is checked for all boxes by default. Let's say you're in an internet cafe using their PC, you have to move very quickly if you want to prevent Chrome from pulling your synced passwords onto their local drive. Isn't it obvious design to disable those boxes by default?!
At least on iOS and macOS I see no reason not to use Safari, Edge on Windows is pretty good too. Power users will stop recommending Chrome to the average user after these changes and over time market share will hopefully decline.
Edge is not a bad browser at all, however if you are signed in Windows it will do same shit - sync everything automatically so I would avoid using it if you care about privacy.
It’s tough to use Safari if you’re a web developer; Chrome tends to be better at rendering pages and in overall performance, as well as adopting features quicker than Apple.
Performance may have been an issue years ago, but nowadays safari is just as fast and consistent at rendering. I use safari as my default now, including for web dev, and have chrome ready in the rare case I need it.
I just recently visited a site (afterschool program) that silently failed for me using Mac Chrome where Safari worked fine. All other assets other than the login form loaded making me wonder what I was missing.
I almost missed a mandatory form that finally resolved by calling the number on the contact page. This is the sort of thing that used to be the other way around...
Web Developer here. I find Safari to be much faster than Chrome. I still use Chrome as my "work" browser due to the ecosystem of useful extensions (react, graphql, a11y, etc). But I close Chrome at 5pm, and when I need to do non-developer-y things, Safari is a much more pleasant experience (especially now that it has favicons).
These changes are really shocking. I’ve stopped using chrome a week ago for entirely different reasons and happy to hear one has managed to avoid sll this mess.
I’m using 3 different gapos accounts, that would be some serious mess.
Even if this change is reverted, I’m not going to switch back.
By chrome, it was nice for a pretty long time.
Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth
downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs
Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively,
this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen
to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome
somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people
eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off
the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.
Source: Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of Privacy Defense In Depth
"Listening in" is inaccurate. "Ok Google" was opt-in only, and did not record users without consent. Chromium downloaded but didn't run the binary blob.
I've removed all sorts of dumb stuff slowing down the build that was included by accident or unnecessarily on my project at work. Never attribute to malice ...
> A mistaken include in a build file, most likely.
Yea, "whoops we accidentally downloaded a surveillance device on your system!"... If that sort of negligence can happen, what else is the browser currently doing, or capable of doing in the future, "accidentally"?
Not to make light of the point you're making, but by far and large customers actively want this.
There's a large market opportunity right now for voice controlled systems. Controlling those systems with your voice means they have to be able to listen to you. Full stop.
While I think it's going to take a long time before we truly understand the repercussions of those systems (and I want to be clear, I say that not as an omen of fear and doom, but as a literal statement: We don't understand exactly what level of monitoring we're ok with or is appropriate as a society) I think complaining that google is acting in a solely nefarious way by attempting to incorporate voice control into the browser is disingenuous.
Windows (the literal glass ones) also allow people to see into your home. They let any random stranger on the street walk right up and view the things you own, as well as yourself and your family. But by far and large we've decided we like windows enough that the privacy loss is worth it.
This principle is heuristical and as such can result in down-side when one doesn't actually resolve the uncertainty within the heuristic (read: guess) with detailed evidence.
The obvious downside here is that you can accumulate a bunch of risks which each independently satisfy the heuristic, and so don't seem like risks, but in aggregate can result in a swing towards the opposite of what it says.
Meaning, yeah, sure, stupid thing added to the codebase. But with the accumulation of all the poor decisions Google has made surrounding privacy, is Google really that fucking idiotic, or, what?
Yes, it's maybe intentional, and just using the rule "Never attribute to malice that which cane be attributed" as an indication that there isn't any malice is stupid because it's getting you to change your mind about the kind of thing going on without evidence.
It's like saying Occam's Razor always gives you the right analysis of how things are. No, it only gives you the best guess given that you've taken everything possible into account. But here it's worse, because it's not taking into account all of the other times Google has infringed a common-sense understanding of privacy.
Whether or not it's more likely that Google is intentionally crossing this line, rather than it's just merely possible that they're intentionally doing it, depends on other information. In this case because it's unlikely that Google is really that's stupid, because they're good engineers with strong QC practices, so it's more like that there is some kind of intention involved. Not to be "evil" but to deliberately do things that deny the social value of avoiding surveillance.
I want to switch to Firefox, but the developer tools simply do not work at all. Every time I try to use the console on the site that I'm working on, the tab freezes and everything just stops working. (This immediately happens, not after a period of working and then bugging out) If any representative from Mozilla wants to reach out, I would be glad to help you fix your software because we need better competition in this space. (email is in my profile)
Current Firefox version: 63.0b8
OS: mac OS High Sierra (10.13.6 17G65)
Have reported there before and have gotten no attention to any issues previously posted. In my experience bugzilla has been a black hole and reaching out via public channels is more effective at influencing change in an organization. I understand that you may think this is uncouth but letting other people know publicly why their product isn't being used is effective.
I’ve never seen this happen on any website, ever, and I’ve used the dev console on some pretty insane websites. Come up with minimal steps to reproduce and file a bug like a normal person, like the other comment suggests.
People like me use Firefox for their paying job daily and somehow we still don’t find it beneath ourselves to file bugs.
If I flipped a light switch and the room caught on fire, I hope that your response won't be:
"I've never seen this happen before and I've been in some pretty insane buildings"
I've never seen anything like it happen on any other website either, but yet here I am. The failure is so stark that I would have no idea where to begin debugging, and would likely need guidance from someone with more knowledge of the system so I wouldn't waste days of my time. I've reported the issue in the past and gotten nowhere so here I am trying in a different avenue.
I actually haven’t been in any buildings where I could plausibly have imagined flipping a light switch causing its containing room to burst into flames, which is why if you had said that flipping the light switch in your office caused it to spontaneously combust I would have reserved judgement. I don’t really follow your non sequitur.
You act as if days of your time are somehow worth more than days of some browser engineer’s time. The company I works for makes a decently popular and extremely browser-intensive web application and even we at least do some minimal investigation when we want, say, a Chrome bug to get fixed. If opening dev tools caused Firefox to crash for me you can bet I’d at least try to come up with a minimal STR.
I’m sorry to inform you that you are not that special and that your entitlement is not flattering.
I use firefox and have an addon to specifically erase my google cookies when I close the browser. I don't see a problem with this new chrome feature. Ive seen users logging into eachothers browser gmail, maybe google is democratizing the info they collect so everyone can access it? :) Ill point to this again https://youbroketheinternet.org/trackedanyway
The Mozilla container plugin is really good. Just set all google domains to automatically open in their own container. Takes 30 seconds to install and 30 seconds to set that configuration.
Why are people so loyal to one browser? Where is it written that one has to be married to a specific browser and shun all others? A common thread I hear is that certain browsers are slow and don't feel fast (which is something you can partially fix by adding additional RAM to your machine and running the browser on an SSD). OP shuns Chrome but forgets there is more competition than previous years where the main three contenders were IE, Firefox and Chrome. Now we have Brave, Vivaldi, Qups, Iridium browser, Ungoogled-chromium[1], Tor Browser Bundle, Waterfox, Palemoon, Comodo Dragon, and a few other flavors of Chrome exist out there but are very buggy and unsecure and not updated often. Personally I run several browsers and isolate my sessions with them - so one for Facebook, one for Twitter, another for shopping, etc (Just to make sure there is no cross-talk between the various services I use).
> For all we know, the new approach has privacy implications even if sync is off. The Chrome developers claim that with “sync” off, a Chrome has no privacy implications. This might be true. But when pressed on the actual details, nobody seems quite sure.
This seems more like, I'm being told the thing I'm worried about isn't happening, but I don't believe it.
Which is fine, but not sure what's changed with what's being done, rather than a change making clearer what's possible (when signed into google, chrome has your google cookie).
> For example, if I have my browser logged out, then I log in and turn on “sync”, does all my past (logged-out) data get pushed to Google? What happens if I’m forced to be logged in, and then subsequently turn on “sync”? Nobody can quite tell me if the data uploaded in these conditions is the same. These differences could really matter.
Again, how is that possibility any different than before this change?
It seems this is mostly a well intentioned (for a subset of chrome users) but poorly thought out UI change (giant blue button).
Some of you here might be thinking, "well you can always use a passphrase while using chrome sync" to mitigate all privacy issues. I generally advocate use of a passphrase to people I know. BUT digging a bit into it I found that chrome's encryption is NOT STRONG AT ALL. Here[1] the author describes that brute force is possible within 4 days if the sync passphrase has 40 bits of entropy, with $1000 hardware. So with more expensive hardware, this can be done within minutes.
TBF even firefox is not excellent in this regard(based on the article), but it is much better.
Yes, Firefox could do better, but at least Sync there was designed with privacy in mind - Chrome Sync wasn't, and even if you set a passphrase it will only encrypt passwords and none of the other data such as your browsing history.
Yes, it does. I just tried this, when I set a passphrase everything shows up as encrypted in the Google Dashboard. So maybe things changed since I wrote this, or maybe I misunderstood it initially. Either way, the default is not having a passphrase, and the passphrase setting is buried pretty deep, so most people won't set it. What's worse, you cannot really avoid an initial unencrypted sync before you can set up a passphrase. The point still stands, this isn't a system designed for privacy.
> Even if the browser never produced a scrap of revenue for Google...
I think that Google Chrome was always about ads. The browser has an auto-completion algorithm that sends users to Google Search to click on well-disguised ads on the way to their destinations rather than sending users directly to URLs.
(Until recently, Firefox would send people directly to URLs instead of search. You have to enable the two separate boxes in Firefox to make that work now -- ctrl-l for URLs and ctrl-k for search.)
Chrome has a few serious dark patterns if you look closely. Also watch out for Google's current attempts to get rid of URLs, because it's probably motivated by getting people to become more dependent on search to click on ads (as well as hiding from people that they are visiting AMP "caches" instead of people's real (HTML) websites).
Forcing users to sign in to their browser is simply bad taste. Ever since Sundar Pichai became CEO, Google changed for the worst. It’s very unfortunate.
I'd strongly suggest people create separate users in the browser, one for daily, one for Google, one for Facebook.
This way in my regular browsing there's no Facebook or Google cookies reporting on what websites I visit.
And with this new change, presumably in your daily profile, your browser remains signed out also.
It's really easy and doesn't impact at all on workflow, if you want your Gmail you just click the user button, and click Google. You could even set that user's homepage to Gmail.
That said, you could also just switch to Firefox or Brave.
(Copy pastaing myself. With an addendum: I don't know if this will actually result in less of your private data compromised, but it seems plausible)
I've tried containers, and I really want to switch to Firefox because I support their aims, but I found containers really clunky.
It might have been the fact that they were tabs in the same window, and it made it harder for me to control/organise/understand what was in what container.
Especially when opening new tabs.
I can't remember the details but I remember finding it fiddly. Maybe I'll give it another go.
Man, a "DJB custom search engine" would probably be amazeballs. You would submit queries via an environment variable with additional data on FD6 and get data back 1024 chars at a time, prefixed in TAI64N, and IPv6 sites would be completely banned.
Still shocked that all of this junk ended up being a version of Chrome that some of the Chrome leads were hyping on Twitter as something they were super excited to be releasing.
Chrome was always spying and collecting data from users since the very first day, every developer knew it that's why most of hackers and devs switched to Chromium. The open source edition which you can patch and modify to completely disable any communication with Google servers. Last I checked on GitHub there were tons of patches. Just switch to Chromium and problem is solved. Chrome is garbage.
I know this will be downvoted into oblivion but this isn't evil. 99% of users want this feature. They want their passwords synced and they don't want to have to log in multiple times. With a data point of one I want this feature. I'm sure if I poller my non tech friends they'd almost universally want this feature.
An option to opt out might be good but most people are helped not hindered by this.
I have been using Google for pretty much as long as they have been around. I was one of the first gmail users, one of the first Android users, one of the first gsuite users.
And I'm done.
I really don't like the whole Apple experience for many reasons, and not for lack of trying. The Apple IOS system just doesn't do it for me and the whole walled garden approach just isn't my thing. Having said that, I am fed up with Google waging this relentless war on their own users, and I'm done with them. I am ordering the new iPhone Xs Max, and given that I am just as tired with the impossibility of dealing with disabling all the crapware in Windows 10, and the very ominous messages from MS that "windows is a service" (no it isn't, you greedy fuckers, it is an OS) am eyeing up the options replacing my surface pro (new model) with a mac.
Again, I am no fan of the Apple experience, but they appear to be a lot more committed to privacy and security. Google, you used to be awesome. Not anymore though, so bye.
Google already forces the "Account Chooser" for web sign out on everyone with no option to disable. This is all related.
There was previously a link to an opt-out switch that set a cookie to disable account chooser, but Google have now removed that. They don't like to give people choice, not even advanced users.
Account chooser basically re-invents the concept of signing out. Google keeps your name and email displayed on the page after sign out. It takes multiple annoying clicks to "remove account" from the account chooser.
Their suggestion to use private browsing mode to sign in, is not always convenient. Often you just want to sign out properly with one click, as per the way the rest of the world does it, and have no record of your credentials lurking around. Google says no to that, and forces their account chooser on everyone for their own agenda, and nothing to do with user preference.
Sometimes I think the law should step in, as it does with privacy. "Sign out" should mean exactly that, nothing less.
I actually took a few moments today and thought about what it would take to launch a new browser. Obviously it’s a lot, but since the browser is becoming so important, almost like an OS itself, it is only going to become more important that privacy and neutrality are core designs.
I know it’s been clear for a long while, but I’m just really realizing that an Ad company completely manages this new type of “OS”. By only this test alone, Microsoft would be a much more trusting/reliable company, since their core business model wasn’t in Ads, not so much when considering other test points.
I honestly don’t think the Linux approach is going to work either, since design/ux is so important in the browser, and those are fundamentally ignored more than not in that ecosystem.
(To make a point, I love Linux).
I personally would pay for a browser, at least a premium version, as long as a free version with the basics was avail.
I’ve never had to think about any of these things before the last major Chrome update, it’s kind of scary.
I think the leaked video of Sergy Brin and his army of senior executives crying at the loss of Hillary Clinton on election night didn't serve the public well. Their hope for lower wages for new hires via unbridled immigration was a big defeat. If anything, it shows what they really care about. The fact that you have senior people, owners even, in a publicly traded company outwardly pandering to a left-leaning ideology and being partisan in nature, this isn't going to sit well with anyone from the outside looking in. They really are this way -- from the owners, all the way down. I woulnd't be surpised if they lose common carrier status, safe harbor status, and being regulated as such. It's a real shame too because they had a good thing going for a while. Hopefully duckduckgo and similar search engines dont follow the same path.
At little off-topic, but in a similar vein I had been waiting and hoping for Google Fiber to show up in our neighborhood. I was mostly of the mindset that Google, of all ISPs, would be the most Net Neutrality-friendly provider.
Meanwhile, AT&T showed up first with their gigabit fiber offering, and I signed up for it. Google still hasn’t come through despite earlier promises, and I’m increasingly glad they haven’t. I’m not suggesting that AT&T is perfect. They’ve had some significant shortcomings in the privacy area themselves. I’m simply saying that I no longer view Google in the simplistic terms I once did. They are a complicated organization with seemingly conflicting priorities.
For the same reason, I’ve also switched away from using their 8.8.8.8 DNS. My wife is on Duck Duck Go, but I haven’t been able to make that leap myself (yet).
There is a huge problem with the way our economy and legal system views technology.
Software is made up of code, it's bits of information; in its simplest forms, code can be like math formulae; an elegant algorithm or architecture is more like something you know than something you have. Many algorithms are in the public domain but the majority of the world's most important code is not in the public domain.
Unfortunately the law doesn't regard computer code as knowledge, it regards it as an asset that can be protected as private property - That's why today we have insane monopolies that are seemingly impossible to take down. The world's most important code should be in the public domain and belong to anyone who cares to learn it.
The ‘code’ to Facebook and google, if one can say there is such a thing, is not particularly important. Their control of their networks and IP is important. Reading various code to Facebook would not enable me to create a competitor to Facebook in any way.
Another surprising dark pattern related to Google logins is that in recent versions, it's basically impossible to log out from the Youtube Android app. It seems that Google is hell-bent on having everyone logged in to their services at all times.
I try leaving Chrome every now and then but every time it turns out Firefox is just too slow to tolerate and this was the initial reason why I've moved to Chrome some years ago (yes, my PC is old and I make heavy use of extensions).
As I have mentioned this is consistent with a trend of trying to squeeze money out of things that didn't need to generate cash back when search advertising paid for everything. Now, not so much and not getting better.
That said, I appreciate the discussion with even my "non-tech" type friends who are starting to understand the cost of 'free' stuff. That folks are learning I find refreshing, it makes the opportunity for products that explicitly protect privacy or disavow surveillance-as-a-service type businesses that much more competitive.
I checked out brave a few times but every time stopped using it due to the bulky feeling of their interface and the forced remembered sites you visited that show as an icon when you open a new tab. I take as much offense at browsers showing me every single site I went to without an easy “turn off this feature “ toggle as I do with chrome forcing itself into my browsing experience. When will a browser come around that is light and does what it’s supposed to do - let you browse.
> If you’re in basic browsing mode, your data is still stored locally. The problem is that you no longer get to decide which mode you’re in.
But yes you do! Don't use gmail and you will remain in basic mode.
I get the author's point, but he seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. If you're using gmail, Google already owns a very very significant part of your personal data, enough that you should be worried about it. If you don't trust Google to treat your cookies and other web-data with proper controls, then you shouldn't trust Google to manage your email either.
So from a principled perspective, yeah it's a step backwards for sure. But from a practical perspective, it isn't nearly as substantial.
I for one did find this new misfeature useful -- because Chrome signin and sync are buggy as hell. I get logged out all the time for no apparent reason. Loading gmail (usually without a new signin) re-signs me into Chrome now.
I am not going to switch browsers based on this slide in user privacy from Google. They already suck wrt user privacy and this isn't that significant for me (as a gmail user). Chrome is still much better than FF for me. And come on, FF has had its own privacy flubs as well. didn't they force pocket on everyone? If you switch browsers everytime one of the vendors makes a misstep, there are going to be no more browsers to choose from, save elinks.
Still, here's hoping someone writes an extension or figures out how to block sign-in at a network level.
Can't these issues be solved by using the "People" feature and using a different identity for gmail vs your browsing when you want not to be signed in?
I use the different identities extensively (work gmail, personal gmail, and other identities) and the quick switcher in the top right is for me the biggest reason why I've been unable to move to Firefox. (FF containers are not the answer, I know that much. I think FF identities are but they lack easy switching.)
I’m a partially savvy user and was surprised when I went to view my recent tabs on (the new) Chrome for iOS and it has my recent desktop tabs on as well.
They are pulling the same tricks with the iOS apps, if you use Google Maps not logged in and you login to one of the Google Docs apps your Maps activity is now associated with your account once again. It’s sleazy and it’s a shame Apple doesn’t allow you to block it (this developer is not allowed to share information between apps and websites)
I also noticed this weekend that the iOS Youtube app now asks if links should be opened in Safari or Chrome. If Chrome isn't installed on the device the button says "Install" instead of "Open." I don't know how new this is, but it's pretty sleezy.
Suspected something strong arming us was in the works when Google silently disabled the setting for complete always private browsing. I have this set on both Firefox and Chrome, no history, data, nothing remembered on my work computer. One day I noticed history in Chrome and surprise the settings for no history were gone.
-Google tried to block Ad Nauseam(its debatable effectiveness and value is a different matter - the fact alone was what irked me).
-Firefox is being slowly, bit-by-bit re-written in Rust. What kind of Rustacean I would be not to use the product that's been the raison d'être of this language?
Something, I missed in the article, is Chrome's background in WebKit. (Rather, it seems to convey the impression that this was an original project by Google.)
Anyway, this may also directing us towards a viable alternative: A new, independent and cross-platform repackaging of WebKit2 / WebCore.
Webkit and Safari were meant synonymous, Webkit referring to the framework, Safari to the specific application packaging.
On a practical level, it's been quite some time since Safari isn't cross-platform anymore. Also, it's fixed to a specific version of the operating system, which also applies to the open source Webkit release. I'd love to see an implementation with less external dependencies.
Just watched youtube on the newest chrome it immediately brought my PC to a near-freeze status with 2GB swapped to disk, unusable. Opened firefox and it worked smoothly.
This started to occur recently, combining with the fact that each chrome tab needs about 120MB memory along, yes it is about time to be back to firefox
Related: the morning Chrome updated itself to 69, it went into spinny-beach-ball hell (I had a zillion tabs open, which hadn't been too many before). This mattered because I had a plane to catch, and info on my trip to review and save. It wasn't immediately obvious why it was suddenly unusable, the first workarounds I tried didn't help, and every step of trying things took a long time. (E.g. bookmark all tabs, close the window, and restart: now you're just back seeing the same zillion tabs, where in previous versions with my setup this would come back with an empty window.)
OK, things change and we're kind of stuck going along for the sake of security updates, but going near-unusable at an important moment without obvious warning is a problem. (I'm looking at Firefox and Brave now too.)
On mine I see the new icon but when I click on the menu that pops up has a "sign in to Chrome" button that you can click. I wonder if it hasn't signed me in yet because my Gmail cookie hasn't expired and so I haven't retyped my user name and password since it upgraded.
I think it's interesting that this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Chrome already handled cookies for every website that you viewed, but now that it says "and I'm going to use them to log into Google outside of a tab" everyone freaks out.
I think google has been starting to help people in getting investment and money in returns rather than helping people gain important information just like before. It's become monopolized in a way people will think of having money rather than gaining knowledge.
Remember all of GAFA is building tools for the next billion. (i.e) China/India/Indonesia/{Africa}. There you have this very issue - people sharing one computer with one another. Same with AMP. HN is prominently Europe/US is missing this.
After they dropped inbox, I'm actively trying to leave google products but it is definitely hard. The band-aid is fused with the skin. It also made me realize that tying oneself to a single product/company is definitely to avoid.
I've successfully transitioned away from all google products with the exception of Android. It seemed impossible at first but all it took was a rpi3, dd-wrt router, free ddns from freedns.afraid.org, letsencrypt cert and nextcloud.
I log into my personal gmail and Facebook on Firefox and everything else on Chrome. I’ve been doing this for years now and I’m perfectly comfortable. For the most part I’ve forgotten about any differences between the two browsers.
If this is your strategy, you're going to also need to avoid google documents and signing into youtube.. and there's also the fact that at some point you need to ask yourself if Chrome is really great enough to warrant using multiple browsers when Firefox containers take care of everything privacy related for you.
Using Brave for a bit will give you some perspective on what sort of things (e.g. location) are being requested whenever you hit a Google-related page.
I am also planning to leave for partly similar reasons. Other reasons would be that their shipped product is a heap of sh#t. Removed loading indicator, blank pdf pages, removed html5 video control buttons, broken network traffic inspector in dev tools, frozen and crashing html pages, broken password manager. Not to mention that they also allowed to make the browser a managed instance by your company's administrator when you are logged in with your company's gsuit address which turns the browser into an absolutely miserable experience (and for this reason the new signin process is really vile). I am not saying that all of this started with the latest release, but all of these are present in the latest release. It's a s###ty product just like IE6 was back in it's heyday.
With the Chrome Incognito mode you can do all of your stuff on a cookie to cookie basis. Just do something, log out, close incognito, then open again. Of course this involves trust that incognito is real.
Just imported my bookmarks and writing this message from firefox. I was hesitant to move for a long time because I liked chrome dev tools a lot but it looks like firefox has caught up.
Personnaly I don't care about the login thingy, but I dislike their latest redesign, so I switched to Firefox at work and I'll see how to switch for personal use.
Are you done with the free product you have used for free for 10+ years? Oh, you are still going to use Gmail and other free services for free? Quit your wining then.
I switched to Brave on iOS after the Chrome redesign that ruined the UX for me. Pretty happy with it so far. It has some pretty neat features as well -- a visible tab strip that you can swipe and select/close tabs, for example.
Anyone who thinks Google doesn't already have all of that mined data on you, wether you are signed into sync or not, is kidding themselves.Google search, Google plus, chrome, play, Android, analytics, wifi, isp services- that already know where you go on the internet. By not syncing your fooling yourself into believe that your internet usage is yours.
Although I agree with and respect the author’s opinion here - I’ve all but given up on not being tracked across the internet. At this point, dozens if not hundreds of faceless corporations can easily put together who I am and what I’ve looked at and posted on the internet for at least the past 15 years, and there’s nothing I can do about it any more.
That still doesn't solve the problem that it will probably be enough time for Google to send your browser data to them if they change that to be the case, which honestly they probably will.
The clear break for me came in version 39. I am staying on Chromium 38 for the few sites and extensions where I still depend on Chrome and using Firefox for everything else. Once version 38 becomes obsolete I will stop using Chromium alltogether.
You are not doing any favours to yourself by staying on older version of Chrome. There have been many vulnerabilities and your data might be compromised because of this.
Why not just use a different modern browser instead, I don't get it.
You are right, of course. I still use Firefox for everything except the few extensions I haven't replaced yet. I expect this interim period to last up to a month.
P.S: I do understand your concern. But I see that increasingly google is building for its billions outside of EU/US where people share devices and look at security in a totally different way.
Oh come on, that's just an absurd example. Gun rights and an article about gun control are literally the same thing. The article surfaced by Google's algorithm is the more relevant and comprehensive one when it comes to gun rights.
I suspect anyone who disagrees is taking a provincial, American view on the subject, and is being triggered by the phrase "gun control".
I'm an owner of firearms and in favor of the second amendment and I still agree with parent, Gun Control being highlighted as a relevant article makes complete sense, since Gun Control is fundamentally about rights related to firearm ownership.
Right - of course. So the question is: are the other "things that matter" designed to:
1) Inform the user and help the user quickly find facts, narratives, and meaningful content related to the search phrase?
2) Sell things?
3) Promote modes of political control by narrowing the scope of acceptable thought and connection between search phrase and content?
We all hope for #1. We all accept #2. But I think that most of us, at least until recently, had thought that #3 wasn't happening to any significant degree.
I agree that results like this one are befuddling - a search for "Politically controversial and anti-state concept <foo>" brings as the first result, "Related but saccharine pro-state concept <bar>" when both foo and bar appear in approximately equal stature in the domain in question.
Yeah, I think that's odd. And I don't see a way to easily explain it in the context of numbers 1 and 2 above.
So I think you're right to be skeptical here. On the other hand, after a scan of each, I see two plausible reasons that the "Gun control" article might be elevated.
One, it's somewhat longer, with more references and cross-links (it even has a "See also" link to the "Gun rights" article).
Two, superficially, the "Gun control" article is a bit more internationally focused. The title of the "Gun rights" article is straight out of the U.S. Constitution. The appearance doesn't really hold up under scrutiny -- they both spend similar shares of their content on U.S. stuff -- but it might make a small difference.
Regardless of the reason, it's definitely good to pay attention to this sort of thing.
Try Googling the term "white couple" as an image search - you will be provided with a page of interracial couples, not white couples. Not that I have a problem with interracial couples, my own family is interracial. But it's obvious how Google is attempting to influence the perspectives of it's users.
I just opened up a private tab and did this (and by the way, going in, I was and am already suspicious that Google is in fact using search results to manipulate public opinion, at least some of the time and in an experimental way).
In the top two rows (ie, 8 images), three are from a reddit post about this very controversy.
The remaining five are images of couples. Of these, three are what look to my eyes to be white couples. One is an image of an ethnically Indian couple in an article about not being able to adopt a white child. The other is a photo of two dudes doing a hand symbol together with a caption "black and white couple gesturing with hands."
All of these images seem very relevant to the phrase "white couple."
So, actually, this is a case where Google Image Search gives back perfectly appropriate results, at least for me as of today.
Is it though? The term “white couple” is already racially charged and its use across the internet will often be in that context.
Are you implying that there are Google employees manually tinkering with the result of millions of search terms for the purposes of influencing the American population? And nobody at Google has leaked it? That’s hilarious.
And how is that influence campaign going to work on a practical level? Are you assuming people are so dumb as to change their opinion on core political matters because their racially charged search term didn’t acid wash the internet of its diversity??
Any attempt to algorithmically shape perspectives is crude with today’s state of the art.
How precisely would such an algorithm work, while not creating obvious artifacts and errors throughout the search results for all people using the service.
And how would it work for people only in the us and not elsewhere?
> For me or anyone to believe this, is a huge ask.
Agreed.
> Any attempt to algorithmically shape perspectives is crude with today’s state of the art.
I suspect that the truth of this statement is very difficult to ascertain at the moment. Reasonable people might dispute both which technologies represent the "state of the art" and also which outcomes represent successfully shaped perspectives.
Although I don't have the data to back up this assertion (and again, I'm not sure such data is cognizable in the current environment), I think that for some reasonable definitions of the above that indeed perspectives can successfully be algorithmically shaped today, though as I said above, I think that this "white couple" nonsense is not a meaningful example.
> How precisely would such an algorithm work, while not creating obvious artifacts and errors throughout the search results for all people using the service.
Again, it may not be clear to anyone, including the authors, precisely how such an algorithm works. That's why A/B (and other) testing is needed.
And I think people in this thread are saying that indeed obvious artifacts are starting to creep up (although again I think that the "white couple" thing is a total misfire and not at all an example - the "gun rights" thing appears to my eyes to be much closer).
> And how would it work for people only in the us and not elsewhere?
Isn't this already at a point of triviality? Doesn't Google already do this all the time? I mean, if you travel outside North America, indeed the Google experience is palpably different from the one in the US.
1. It's subjective if the results are wrong. _You_ know what you are looking for, Google however has to guess. And it's algorithms aren't perfect at figuring out _your_ intent - even though they may do a fine job for the average person. Right now, for me, the top result is from a Reddit thread about this very query. The rest are things like "black and white couple" and "couple with white background". These aren't what you expect, but, it makes sense why they are being returned.
2. Your test does nothing to establish intent. A pretty reasonable explanation for the search results is just that that is what the algorithm does.
3. I'm sure someone can come up with some theory about how tweaking the results of this very specific search is a nefarious plot to promote interracial relationships - but it requires some pretty tortured logic to conclude that such a plan would, even if true, be even remotely effective at accomplishing it's goal. That's basically the Hallmark of a conspiracy theory.
You do know the rest of the world is doing just fine without your absurd gun "rights". I much prefer my "right" to live in a city where guns are exceptionally difficult to procure. That right keeps me much safer than your gun rights—and that's an indisputable fact, not an opinion.
Fair enough, but it's simply a fact that certain obvious societal problems begin and end at the boundaries of nations. I didn't choose for it to be like that, I wish it wasn't like that. I didn't create the world we live in.
And right under that there is a suggested link for "Right to keep and bear arms." What is most likely happening is that the Gun Control page is more popular than the Right to keep and bear arms page, so the algo picked that one for the single card that they load. IDK what they use for ranking, but I would imagine that the fact that 'gun' appears in the title of one and not the other is impacting the matching and also the Gun Control page is much longer so it probably seems like a higher quality page versus the other one.
• "Google has an agenda. They don't hire lobbyists on K street to fight for more neutral search results."
• In this case, "the fact that 'gun' appears in the title of one and not the other is impacting the matching and also the Gun Control page is much longer so it probably seems like a higher quality page versus the other one"
Google's agenda is to make money. Hinting that they have a secret agenda to take away people's guns is just unsubstantiated conspiracy theory nonsense.
Having the word "gun" in the title explains why the "gun control" page is listed first. Positing Google does it because they have an agenda besides showing relevant results fails the law of parsimony here.
Please explain how Google implements its agenda into the search results people see before mocking other people's statements.
Also note that the top "organic" result on Google's search for "Gun Rights" is just a tag page from NPR. There is no way that's a relevant result. So even if it's not on purpose, it's a very poor result...and given it stands out more so than other keyword searches it seems a bit odd.
Edit: down voted for citing study from the National Academy of Sciences, bubbles certainly are thick.
"Gun Control" was not what was searched for, it is not up to Google to tip the scales on what ideological conclusion is seen, only what item is searched for with relevant results. They have a moral obligation to be neutral. If you were in Saudi Arabia, searched for "women's rights" and Google switched it to an article on "obedience to your husband," I'm sure you'd have a huge problem with that.
Yes it was. The concept of gun rights cannot exist without the concept of gun control, it's quite literally the same theme. Gun control is what defines which gun rights people have.
Thank you for pointing this out. I don't mean to be an alarmist, but people need to wake up to the fact that algorithms, or lack thereof, bear a great responsibility on human rights now, and that's only going to grow. If Google is trying to change free thought or information flow through algorithms either for internal political stances or the whims of a government (ie China,) that's a huge problem.
> Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.
Such a result would definitely be odd framing, though. Especially if it was the main infobox and not, say, the seventh result.
For instance, I could see a "soft authoritarian" regime subtly justifying its censorship regime by preferentially surfacing content that makes censorship seem more justified. One way to do that is to encourage the idea that "limits are common" and discourage the idea that "free speech is a natural right," which you can do by changing the search ranking to surface an article like you described.
The implication being what, that returning the “Censorship” article is pro-censorship? That people who choose to type in “free speech” are so stupid as to flip their position because Google responded with an article on the exact same topic, which is no more pro-censorship than the free speech article is pro-free-speech?
You can believe in so-called natural rights as much as you like, that doesn't make them any more real. In fact you can set aside the concept entirely; all so-called "rights" are mere artificial constructs of hierarchical societies. You have the privilege to do whatever your particular society permits. You can call these rights, but they're certainly not natural.
(Meanwhile, I live in a society with absolutely no gun rights, and I'm extremely glad that I do. I much prefer my "right" to live in a city where guns are difficult an expensive for criminals to procure. It keeps me and my family much safer than your gun rights. And that's not an opinion, it's a proven indisputable fact.)
To pretend that rights vs control are not highly loaded terms seems purposely ignorant. There are clearly a few ways of approaching the issue, and defaulting to one is undoubtedly going to annoy those of any other interpretation.
Tangentially related: the iOS YouTube app is constantly trying to get Chrome installed on my phone by showing a “browser selection” dialog when e.g. tapping on a link in a video description.
It says “Download Chrome, or open in Safari”, and even though there’s a switch which says “Always ask which browser to use”, unchecking it (it’s checked by default, of course) only gets rid of this popup for a few days, then they show it again!
I don't like to be "forced" to do anything, but I happen to like browsers that sync! This way I can save a file to my "reading list" or add a bookmark at work and I'll see it at home. Very handy.
I feel opposite of this. I want my bookmarks to be separated on desktop and laptop. Sometimes my wife will use my laptop and I’ve had occasions where I’d bookmark something as a surprise for her (a gift I wanted to purchase) or I’d research some activity- only to have her find out just because google decided it was okay to sync my stuff. If there is an option to disable that I’d like to know. Ah hell, the latest UI update to chrome makes me want to dump it entirely. Worst part, it didn’t even ask me if I wanted to update.
> While the story behind the coinage of LGTM remains murky at best, the earliest known use and explanation of the acronym can be traced to a feature summary of Google Mondrian, a peer-review software application for programmers, posted by Niall Kennedy[3] on November 30th, 2006.
Care to explain why Firefox is the most unsafe? I've been using it for a while now and the built-in privacy protections are great (would be better if they were on by default, but hey, we have this at least).
I stopped using chrome a long time ago because its user experience was horrible and it ate up all my computers memory. This would push me over the edge if I hadn't already gone there.
The author gives 3 arguments for not wanting to sign in at all. I find them all rather weak. The first two are actually a single argument.
The first argument: He likes to give consent. He fails to mention why he feels the need to consent to signing in, but the second argument implies it, making this just a prelude to that argument. This need seems irrational as there is no difference in the browsing experience between being signed in (and unsynced) vs being not signed in. The only difference is a minor UX change: you can now accidentally sync (which is his second, and most significant, argument).
His second argument, making it dangerously easy to sync, is actually a good thing for the average user. It is also not that simple to do by accident if you have a separate password set-up for syncing. I think it is safe to say on the whole that people who never sync will still not sync.
His third argument can be written off as paranoia: "For all we know, the new approach has privacy implications even if sync is off. ". Sure, maybe by simply being signed in you are being data-mined in secret, but if you trust Google that little why are you using their services? And what would be preventing them from mining you while not signed in?
Lastly, I think the author is slightly conflating "sync" with "data mining"? For all we know synced data is end-to-end encrypted and Google can't even read your bookmarks? The terms of service "signed-in mode" just states that data gets saved to the cloud, not that Google uses it?
Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting off their blacklist, is literally impossible.
Then came Chrome and Android, which grew to collect so much information on people that it was genuinely baffling.
Then my agency work and work with previous Google employees telling me about Google sales tactics to SMBs in Adwords. Intentionally not focusing on ROI because they knew the companies had such high burn out rates. They would, and continue, to milk them for whatever they are worth. They know the company is statistically going to go out of business in a year, so just take them for whatever they are worth! Luckily agencies act as a middle man, if not for that, the abuse would be so much more widespread. But if you deal directly with Google ad sales (and this is something I never knew existed tbh) they will intentionally screw you if you are under a certain spend.
Now they have growing and creeping monopolies in advertising, and their only real competitors are Amazon and Facebook... which to me are both on or near the level of sleaze that Google has crept to.
Now things are accelerating, with Chrome's increasing intrusion, Android's increasing intrusion, deals with Chinese governments to stifle freedom of expression and speech. Google AMP being a closed system that's only goal is to push Google into controlling more of the web.
Add to that, let me preface that I am not a Trump voter and never will be and probably lean more towards the politics of Google leadership, but the video that leaked out (it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real new organization, maybe it would have been taken a lot more seriously) of the Google town hall also baffled me. I think Facebook might even take their moral obligation of objectivity more seriously than Google...and that's a serious problem. Algorithms can determine electoral outcomes, and Google is one of the top tech lobbyists in Washington. Doesn't that bother anyone?
This is no longer a company I can advocate anyone using. Unfortunately because of their monopoly status in advertising I have to deal with them.