Comment by williamscales
8 years ago
You didn't say why this is important to you so it comes off as a bit of a complaint for the sake of it. Are you concerned about your web history going to your Google account? You can turn that off. Don't believe that will really turn it off? Then don't believe that Chrome wasn't already logging your web history without your knowledge. Is it sad that respect for privacy has degraded this far? Absolutely. Is the merging of Google website logins with Google Chrome browser login a significant decrease in privacy? I believe it really isn't at this point.
I've switched over to Firefox and it's quite fast and nice these days.
> to you so it comes off as a bit of a complaint for the sake of it.
People like you really rise my blood pressure. No, it's not important to him/her, bad defaults[1] are important for everyone because they are incorrect design. The correct design is not to synchronize anything before obtaining informed consent.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
I'm sorry that I raised your blood pressure, and I take your point that I could have worded it better. I (admittedly quite poorly) attempted to push OP to get more specific. That was my only intention.
I completely agree about the dark pattern and I think that's a really good point that I didn't consider at all in what I said.
However, my argument regarding Chrome is that Google carries out tracking so pervasive that it basically doesn't matter any more if they throw a dark pattern like this in the mix. I am still trying to come to terms with how banal this evil has become.
People like you really rise my blood pressure.
May I suggest that this is a very ugly, condescending, dismissive way of talking to anyone. The phrase has no place on a forum like HN.
> May I suggest
Perhaps your suggestion could be valid.
Since you pointed that out, what set me off primarily is similar sentiment when parent hinted that op might be arguing in bad faith with "so it comes off as a bit of a complaint for the sake of it". General dismissive attitude of HN to anything privacy related (like this thread getting downvoted) only exacerbates things further.
I had a separate Ask HN. Tracing some of the history, including Google Analytics that is mentioned in my essay/overview, is quite interesting.
It was a long essay, and I admit I skimmed it, but my main takeaway is: Google gon get ya, almost whatever you're doing.
I am trying to trace the problems back to Larry/Sergey though. I am thinking of getting rid of the malware part to make it a bit shorter BTW.