So, it's bad because it doesn't sync your history by default? Even if the UI is confusing, the worst case here is thinking that your data is being synced when it's not. It's like the opposite of a privacy problem.
Sure, it doesn't automatically sync your browsing history now, but we all know change happens gradually. It's just a "feature" to be enabled later.
I've never once signed into chrome in my life (on purpose). I don't want anything synced between browsers, I like to try and limit what gets kept in the cloud, and with this change they've simply just taken the option away from the user.
Yes, I'm sure that I'm in the minority, but I'm taking this opportunity to start switching to Firefox, switching my mail provider, and am hoping to send them a GDPR request to delete all of my data.
It's not necessarily just this issue that made me do it, it's just the tipping point for me that says.. "ok, this company has gotten too big off people's data, and i no longer wish to be a part of feeding that machine"
Just my 2 cents.
(You might feel that this is a tipping point but it's still not a GDPR issue as far as I can tell.)
> The personal information that Chrome stores won't be sent to Google unless you choose to store that data in your Google Account by signing in to Chrome.
That doesn't say "unless you enable sync", it says it changes "by signing in to Chrome". Since they're now forcing you to sign into chrome without your consent they are also forcing you to accept that they can send your data to their services without needing any additional permissions from you.
> Signing in enables Chrome’s synchronization feature.
This is no longer true, so it seems most likely that that entire paragraph is simply out of date.
At the jobs I've been in since browser syncing became a thing, where there were internal web tools, there has been an explicit policy against enabling it, out of security concerns. Regardless of how good the security might be at Google or Firefox etc. around their syncing stuff, if the content isn't there, it can't be compromised.
Confused, what do you mean? To me thinking that my data isn't being synced when it really is sounds much worse...
Edit: what I mean is, there's no way to get the interface into a state where it looks like you're not logged in, but it is syncing in the background. The only confusion here is in the other direction: you're visibly logged in, but it's not syncing.