Hacker News

Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

191 points by ExMachina73 6 hours ago | 28 comments

fedpost 3 hours ago

It's okay, they're not a monopoly according to this administration. Nothing to see here, carry on!

pavon 2 hours ago

This administration has done nothing to end or undermine the antitrust cases against Google. In both cases the judges found Google in violation of antitrust law, but both handed down fairly mild remedies, despite the administration (prosecutor) pushing for much stronger changes. The judges were appointed by Clinton (Leonie Brinkema) and Obama (Amit Mehta).

Mountain_Skies 3 hours ago

Google and the rest of the billionaire class thank you for ensuring everyone is too divided by red/blue tribalism to ever have enough unity to mount a fight against them. Well done!

asdf88990 3 hours ago

Exactly. It is like Google has only emerged during this administration with their shenanigans.

8note 2 hours ago

iirc lina khan was appointed during the first trump admin and got most of her work done suing to split google during the biden admin?

you are a bit out of the loop if you think this is a partisan issue, or specifically one thats only there when trump is in charge

thephyber 34 minutes ago

Using Lina Khan as an example (your only example?) undermines your point because she started upset Biden and was quickly fired after Trump 2 started.

c0balt 2 hours ago

She got nominated by Biden in Biden's last term in March of 2021 and left in 2025 two weeks after Trump assumed office.

She did not get appointed under Trump nor did substantial work done under his administration.

Edit: I do not necessarily disagree with your comment on the partisan aspects of this issue. This is only meant to respond to the first paragraph.

Zarathustra30 13 minutes ago

While I absolutely believe this, the author should include a control. Go to a different website that sets data, and show that it is deleted when Google data is not.

mgiampapa 2 hours ago

I feel like the obvious thing to check here is that all chrome processes have terminated between tests. If it's still running some zombie process of course the data would persist.

stkdump 20 minutes ago

It would still be a (albeit convenient for google) bug, as the setting indicates closing all windows as the trigger for deletion.

frankacter 2 hours ago

At least on windows, closing chrome doesn't close the system tray process which keeps Chrome and Gemini prestaged and cached. Wonder if OP is experiencing a version of that on his Mac?

Tempest1981 2 hours ago

Microsoft Edge does this too, iirc, for "Startup Boost".

flyingshelf 2 hours ago

When you log into Google, you also log into Chrome. This means that you'll have a lot of exceptions for Google websites or else a "clear history" would log you out of Chrome.

Not justifying it (I don't use chrome) but that's likely what's happening here.

ande-mnoc 2 hours ago

This is what the “Allow Chrome sign-in” setting is for and is turned off by the post author.

demibabs 2 hours ago

In the article he explains he’s not signed into Chrome nor Google during the experiment.

tjpnz 24 minutes ago

Google needs to be broken up.

righthand 31 minutes ago

Google/Alphabet is a bunch of useful good intentioned services wrapped around an nonuseful evil analytics core/monopoly. The people who work with good intentions that “just want to build cool things”, protect the monopoly and the people with bad intentions, who work to empower Google’s monopoly.

cute_boi 57 minutes ago

> all Google Search results are now opaque https://www.google.com/goto?url= garbage rather than the site URLs!

Can google justify why are they doing this? I wish google will die sooner if they start behaving like this.

thinker34 2 hours ago

>> I’m personally inclined to cite Hanlon’s razor here rather than engage in conspiracy theories.

That is a likely case. Chrome is their closed source software unlike the Chromium browser.

LastTrain 2 hours ago

Hanlon’s Razor applies to human behavior, not corporations.

tehlike 2 hours ago

Engineers are humans.

edoceo 2 hours ago

Corporations are not, they're made of humans but they behave worse than an individual.

rectang 8 minutes ago

Fully agree. Humans are social animals who behave differently in different contexts, and the corporate context statistically ensures that the humans inside of it behave in all sorts of lamentable ways.

isncjwjxjwnd 32 minutes ago

And who do you think makes these behavioural decisions? There is no “corporation”, there are, however, those currently on that company’s payroll.

It’s their fault. The people. The humans. The ones working there. The ones knowingly employing their knowledge in service of the company.

It’s always the humans.

cute_boi 48 minutes ago

Politicians are also humans, everyone working for De Beers are also human... Please stop justifying egregious behavior from company who is destroying the fabric of internet with too many useless ads....And it isn't first time they are doing it, these "engineers" were the one who removed mv2 without better ad blocks in mv3.

tehlike 20 minutes ago

1. ads are not useless. 2. without ads, there would be significantly less free content for people to read. 3. politicians are human too, but not the best of us except a few. Yes.

It's hip to say ads make things worse, but reality is often much more nuanced.

My original point being, many times an external person may think something is intentional when it may very well be a bug or may be there for a good reason.

I have observed a few of those both as an external person or an internal person.

charcircuit 24 minutes ago

>useless ads

If the ads were useless, advertisers would not pay for them to exist.

>without better ad blocks in mv3

MV3 adblockers were built before MV2 was deprecated.

cute_boi 18 minutes ago

Just for your info classic ublock style doesn't work on mv3. Google have severely limited adblocking in chrome now. They deprecated very late due to pressure from people, not out of goodwill.

Useless to users, not to advertisers. And, many people like me have never purchased any products after seeing ads at least on internet.