Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings
lapcatsoftware.com396 points by ExMachina73 10 hours ago
396 points by ExMachina73 10 hours ago
Chrome may be an excellent browser, but the venn diagram overlap with malware keeps getting larger.
Is it excellent? It feels more to me that the competition does not really exist - or just sucks. And then people largely gave up, letting the adMoney take over everything.
I abandoned firefox when a mozilla dev claimed Linux users can only listen to audio via systemd+pulseaudio (unless you recompile firefox but who in his sane mind wants to use mozconfig in 2026 - https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/xsoft/firefox...). On adChromium, audio on youtube videos (also owned by Google) works fine, without me having to change anything. And older firefox versions also worked fine. At that moment in time I realised that firefox was no longer about the people. I stopped using it and I seem to not have been the only one who got frustrated with mozilla.
It's okay, they're not a monopoly according to this administration. Nothing to see here, carry on!
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).
Perhaps not US cases, but those aren't the only antitrust cases against Google.
What about Trump's threats after Google was hit with a 2.95 billion Euro fine from the European Commission's antitrust investigation?
From last year: "EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič on Monday made an 11th-hour intervention to stop the European Commission from issuing a penalty against American tech giant Google for its search advertising practices, amid continued trade threats from U.S. President Donald Trump." https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-google-antitrust-decision...
Or from https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/google-meta-big-tech-6-billi... "In February, Trump signed a memorandum stating the U.S. would consider tariffs to “combat digital service taxes (DSTs), fines, practices, and policies that foreign governments levy on American companies.”"
That memorandum is at https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-pr...
No politicians are going to fight a media company. They're in the PR and advertising supply chain.
The administration is serving private business only. They don't care about the people.
It is not a democracy nor a republic state. It is an oligarchy. Thankfully more and more people realise how corrupt the orange mafia is. Recent polls show that - people learn slowly, but they learn.
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!
So we cannot say anything bad about the current administration without being divisive? What does criticising them tell you about tribalism?
The point is that no matter which party rules, they are bribed by big business to represent the interest of big business. Criticism without change does not really work well.
Exactly. It is like Google has only emerged during this administration with their shenanigans.
It seems to be very popular on this site to condemn surveillance capitalism and billionaires. But who built and still maintains the basis for their power, misusing it and the billions. So-called smart engineers like many of HN readers. If they rated morale higher than their personal 100Ks we would not need to wait for a government to stop the misery (in vain).
Yes, I have worked for 400,000 employees corp, then for a 70,000. For the last 15 years I have staid under 100. The pay is less, but it's easier to look into the mirror each morning.
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
Allow me to be anal for a moment, but what is the point of doing “if I remember correctly” for something like this?
You can very easily look up exactly when Lina Khan was appointed and get answer very quickly. Is it not worth the effort checking these things before commenting?
Ok rant over. Sorry to be an asshole. This is not your fault as much a standard which should be changed.
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.
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.
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.
It's convenient that "zombie processes" only retain data for Google-owned sites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49583517
It would still be a (albeit convenient for google) bug, as the setting indicates closing all windows as the trigger for deletion.
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?
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.
I did: "As far as I can tell, www.google.com is the only site exempted by Chrome."
My screenshots do not show this, but my screenshots were not intended as proof, merely as explanation. Chrome is available to everyone and used by millions of people, so anyone who wants proof can reproduce the issue themselves, and I hope that they do.
The fact that the first screenshot is a totally empty browser window (just to show the address bar) made me lose faith about reading the rest of your writing...
Folks,
We must do something about Google. They ruin the www.
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.
This is what the “Allow Chrome sign-in” setting is for and is turned off by the post author.
In the article he explains he’s not signed into Chrome nor Google during the experiment.
Just another reason to stop using chrome and it's related browsers.
If you don't want to hand the biggest ad company a monopoly over web-browsing, start using a gecko based browser like librewolf, zen, mullvad or firefox.
I used to search on google.ca exclusively with disabled js and cookie
Until the day it no longer works. Sad.
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.
> 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.
> Can google justify why are they doing this?
Look at Google's earnings reports and see what constitutes 80-90% of their revenues and profits
1) So the backend can track you across fingerprinted links
2) So you can't know what's searched without getting tracked
You're the product, not the customer.
Interesting observation: As soon as you right click on a link, it switches from that to https://www.google.com/url?...
they do that because they added this dark pattern on gmail almost two decades ago and absolutely nobody ever complained.
why wouldn't they expand it?
Remember AMP?
Baby steps and they’ll try again.
Google still uses amp on websites with a lot of ads... go figure that the king of ads dislikes some ads.
they don't have to! they remembered they control all browsers. much easier for the same goals they had with amp
>> 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.
Hanlon’s Razor applies to human behavior, not corporations.
Engineers are humans.
Corporations are not, they're made of humans but they behave worse than an individual.
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.
Corporations are just groups of people working under a common name towards a common goal, even when that goal is flimsy or bad.
> Corporations are just groups of people working under a common name towards a common goal
Exactly in the same way as humans are just groups of cells working under a common genetic identity towards a common goal.
Yes, but the worst human in an org, has the potential to drag the whole org down. Further, people are not aligned, so groups may disagree with an act, but each lack a majority to effect change. And group infighting may mean no cooperation.
We see this in politics. Orgs are political too.
(no "political" doesn't mean US Left/Righr here. It means simply "political" which can have nothing to do with government or party politics)
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.
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.
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.
Can't remember the last time I saw an ad for something I was actually interested in. These days I am often discouraged from buying a product based on ads.
I don't think anyone is denying the value of advertising to Google or its advertisers.
But with fewer ads influencing their spending, readers might have more disposible income left over to fund content.
>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.
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.
Google needs to be broken up.
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I hate $THING Firefox does, and I'll complain about it, and I will use $CHROMIUM browser and not complain about that for some reason!