Chrome won't clear your Google and YouTube data – even if you tell it to | Hacker News Reader

Chrome won't clear your Google and YouTube data – even if you tell it to

tomsguide.com

94 pointsyvoschaap26 comments

A rehashed and worse article than their linked source, which was discussed here a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24817304

Also, another post of a related article a couple of days later:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24837404

That didn't stop the blitzkrieg of anti-Apple posts reporting the same thing barely a month ago, yet Google-critical posts get flagged in less than an hour if they start getting traction.

Remember a few years ago, Microsoft was running its failing Scroogle campaign and I (under a different nick) and others were defending Google.

Fast forward to today and Google has managed to do to itself all that the Scroogle campaign could realistically have hoped to achieve and then some:

- techies like me go out of our way to avoid them. I just spoke to a friend of mine during lunch and told him to think twice before using Gmail as a single misplaced comment on the Internet can get you locked out with no recourse except hoping for friends on social media if you are so lucky.

- People are still making Chrome-applications just like they made IE6 applications but we are turning the tide now it seems and I see a growing trend that loathes the Chrome-only trend.

- Regulators are circling in the air above.

- etc.

I hear you and I follow the same pattern of avoidance. Google and everything they stand for is old news. Break 'em up!

It feels like there's not a day in recent hn history without a story that makes a compelling case for harsh antitrust on Google. Even the services that you could think are peripheral to their model partake in this.

Millions of developers, millions of apps used by billions of people. It's quite a challenge to have it perfectly run. Mistakes are unavoidable.

Mistakes that just so happen to give their company an advantage over the rest aren't mistakes.

I don't think anyone is going to believe Google did this by mistake.

People loved Chrome when it was released.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=292980

Slowly after they gained monopoly and became sure that they are going to exist in browser-space , they now don't care about these tracking bits present in the browser.

The best way to think of Chrome these days is that it is a Google web browser, as in, it preferences products and services made by Google.

Edge is similar in some ways, but modern Chrome is not a web browser per se but a web browser clearly built by Google with Google’s corporate interests at heart.

The disconnect for many - including myself - is that we remember the first few years of Chrome. How revolutionary it was and how it provided a beautiful path off ‘the terror’ that was Internet Explorer. Modern Chrome is not the same browser, philosophically. Modern Chrome is a Google web browser and integrates the best - and increasingly by default - with Google’s many products and services.

> The disconnect for many - including myself - is that we remember the first few years of Chrome. How revolutionary it was and how it provided a beautiful path off ‘the terror’ that was Internet Explorer.

Funny how history can be subjective. I remember Firefox in this exact role, several years earlier prior to Chrome, which is why I've never received Chrome as some kind of saviour, only as additional competition.

Totally agree re: Firefox also playing that role a decade or so ahead of Chrome, then losing it somewhat during Chrome's ascendancy: perceptions of bloat, slower dev releases, RAM hog on some PCs, no per-tab process isolation, etc

Software like chrome and iOS aren't built for people to use. They're built to insert commercial software into people's lives. Access to information or the ability to communicate with friends is given because it would be difficult to get people to accept it otherwise.

> Software like chrome and iOS aren't built for people to use. They're built to insert commercial software into people's lives.

iOS is designed to sell hardware, unlike Google's products.

That's why I'm getting Apple Music promotions when trying to listen to my locally saved music in Music app? Apple is not as annoying as other vendors, that's for sure, but they're not innocent and they certainly trying to sell some services as well.

This doesn't really surprise me, but the number of people trying to justify it really surprises me.

I’ve hated Google ever since they started automatically signing me into Search when I signed into YouTube.

I fix this by deleting all cookies matching “google” after signing into YouTube, but sometimes I forget to and it infuriates me to see my name in the corner when I search for anything.

Even on iOS they use a browser window to make you sign-in so it cookies up your entire device.

Thankfully the quality of Google Search results has been going downhill for years so it's honestly not that much of a difference to switch to DuckDuckGo as the default engine now.

You can also use this (for MS Edge or Firefox): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookie-autodelete/...

Google has gone rouge for a very long time... Avoid Google if you can.

I know everyone joked a few years ago when they removed "don't be evil" as their tagline and from their employees CoC, but it really does make me wonder.

chrome is a perfect example of abusive software that everyone seems to love

For me Chrome just works. So far I did not see anything I would hate about Chrome. It's extremely polished and fast. I don't love it, but it's just good enough for my needs.

MS Edge doesn't have this feature. Just tested it on my machine. It clears all forms of storage even from MS's own domains tied to the browser like msedge.microsoft.com, msn etc.

For some reason Google's Captchas work much better on Chrome than on Firefox. I thought there was some sort of dedicated tracking built into Chrome. It turned out to be far simpler. They just give google sites special treatment.

Why was this flagged as a dupe instead of the dupe that didn't get any attention, and why haven't they just been merged? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24849558

Is criticism of Google being silenced with flagging?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com