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Comment by ronilan

8 years ago

You assume that the feature will result in some net benefit for Google (at some potential expanse to users/public) but there's no such guarantee.

Historically, the great Google products are made from scratch (or bought early) and stand by themselves. Their not-so-good products or features are the result of some elaborate corporate thinking that comes out under phrases like "Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar".

So, while they (may) think it tightens the lock-in, it (may) actually end up doing the opposite and be a disservice to everyone.

15 comments

ronilan

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srtjstjsj  8 years ago

Why is it harmful to log in once to both apps that use the same account in the same browser?

Gmail and Calendar already share the same login. Is that hurting anyone?

  • danShumway  8 years ago

    Multiple users may use the same browser/devices but different Gmail accounts.

    Even ignoring the (many) privacy implications, this causes problems for syncing across devices. Lets say I share a computer with my partner, but we have separate phones. Should I need to check which Gmail account is logged in before bookmarking something? Why can't we share a Chrome profile across those 3 devices while still maintaining separate Gmail accounts?

    • dragonwriter  8 years ago

      > Multiple users may use the same browser/devices but different Gmail accounts.

      Why would they use the same browser logon. Sure they might use the same be, sure, they might even not use a different user account on the computer, but your are suggesting that they would use the same Google account to log into the browser yet different Google Accounts to log into Google.

      That seems improbable, and likely to have unintended privacy implication that account consistency would mitigate rather than exacerbate.

      2 replies →

    • pdonis  8 years ago

      If you share a computer with someone else, each of you should have your own user accounts. Then each user account will have its own profile data, including which accounts are logged in.

      3 replies →

  • laggyluke  8 years ago

    > Is that hurting anyone?

    It's actually hurting me: I'd like to be able to sign into YouTube on an untrusted device without signing into Gmail at the same time.

    • kkarakk  8 years ago

      why sign into an untrusted device in any way without two factor authentication and incognito mode enabled?