Starting with Chrome 69, Google’s web browser will automatically sign you into your Google account if you sign in on any Google web service (such as Gmail). The move prompted some public outcry, and some folks working at Google were quick to point out that simply logging into Chrome would not cause your data to be synchronized and sent to Google servers.
But now Google is taking another step in response to the feedback it received about the change: you’ll be able to opt out of automatic sign-in starting with Chrome 70.
Google says the idea behind the new Chrome sign-in behavior is to make it easier for users to understand their “sign-in state.” If you look in the upper right hand corner of the browser and see your logo, it means you’r signed in.
To be clear, the automatic sign-in behavior is still going to be enabled by default. But at least you’ll be able to disable it if you don’t like it.
The company is also updating its UI to make it a bit easier to tell whether your passwords, bookmarks, history, and other data is being sent to Google or not. When you click the icon in the future you’ll be able to see whether you’re syncing or not syncing.
Google says another privacy-focused change in Chrome 70 is that when you clear your browser’s cookies, it will actually delete Google cookies along with everything else. That seems to be a response to another recent complaint making the rounds.
I remember when AOL created their own portal-based browser. It had very specific AOL features. I imagine Google trying to do the same here while, at the same time, attempting to unify the ChromeOS experience with their standalone browser.
The problem… like with most tech companies, data collection and tracking is out of control. We don’t trust them and they continue to do it to themselves. I don’t even trust that with or without a sign-in, or cookies getting squashed – Google (and their ilk) aren’t still collecting the same data.
Don’t! Be Evil.
Don’t be evil…when you get caught?
I’m pretty confused at all the backlash on this tbh.
I get when it looked like they were enabling sync by default, that’d be huge, but they’re not — it just makes it easier to see when you’re logged in.
Literally they’re still tracking you the same way now as they were before, so I get being upset about that, but this wasn’t a real change one way or the other, right?
They didn’t have to auto log you in, they could have just put the user icon along side the URL bar if all they wanted was just people to be more aware of their logged in status.
This was a power move plain & simple. Google has done this many times before with their majority market share in Chrome. I have absolutely no doubt that their next move would have been auto syncing after that. Hopefully this backlash will stall their plans by a few years.
Do I believe this was an engineering idea? Of course not. It was definitely a management idea.