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Comment by bogwog

6 days ago

> What is there to sell exactly?

The user base

Logged-in Chrome users are tied to Google logins. The mind boggles at the complexity of trying to somehow separate Chrome identities from Google identities, much less explain that to the general populace for whom "Google", "Chrome" and "browse the Internet" are largely interchangeable.

  • No boggling required. If you want to sync your browser state or settings across computers, make a Chrome account. If you don’t, don’t. If you want to use Google, make a Google account.

    This is how it should work anyway.

  • We had this for ~20 years. It wasn't mind-boggling complex. On the contrary, it was much simpler: you didn't have to "log in" to a piece of software that ran on a computer you owned under a user account you already logged into.

    • You don't HAVE to login unless you want to share your passwords, history, bookmarks etc. between your devices. Simpler = not having those features (which most users seemingly find useful).

      5 replies →

  • There is no value to logging into chrome with a Google account that couldn't be replicated easily with some standalone service. The fact they added google logins to Chrome still bugs me.

And what do I, the new owner of this user base, do with it?

  • 1. make your search engine the default

    2. make your website the default

    3. make it easier to access your suite of web services

    Eg. imagine instead of defaulting to google everything you typed in the search bar defaulted to chatgpt. Imagine open AI could buy that at a discount

    • >1. make your search engine the default

      >2. make your website the default

      >3. make it easier to access your suite of web services

      Chrome is not a search engine. Chrome doesn't have a "suite of web services."

      That's Alphabet/Google.

      Chrome is just the browser.

  • Be careful. Asking these kind of obvious questions might make you ineligible to be hired as a government bureaucrat.