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Comment by eudora | Hacker News Reader

Hang on.

The logical thing to do, if your real aim is to have browser sign in state reflect cookie state, is to sign out the browser when someone clears their cookies.

That would make total sense to users.

I think this is clear evidence that Google made this change to keep more users signed into Google so they can collect more of your data without telling you.

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The article says that is exactly what they are going to do now: when you clear all cookies, you will be signed out.

What they are going to do. As currently released, it is a real issue, not some misunderstanding.

Several people who make a lot of money figured it was a good idea.

Yeah we were talking about the pre-oh-shit-backtrack changes

What data is it that Google collects without telling the user? Granted, they don't issue some pop-up notification or e-mail for every piece of data they collect, as the collect it, but every user has full access to all of the data points Google collects. They are highly transparent about the data they collect and even give users the option to delete that data from Google's records.

I could be mistaken, however, so I'm curious - what data does Google collect without telling the user, at least by making that data collection transparent?

"Performing this action will log you out of chrome. (You may sign in again immediately afterwards.)"

Problem solved?

It’s a dangerous precedent to begin with, I remember platform abuse was a serious concern when Google first launched Chrome. Over the years they’ve built up enormous trust by keeping Chrome (mostly) conflict-free. The moment Chrome really turns into “Google Browser” it will no longer be the default choice (although I suspect we may already be too late to undo this).

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