Sounds like a Chromium bug, not a Debian bug--it's an insidious way to keep Google search as the default.
Just because Debian thinks that they are doing the right thing, they are in fact, controlling the user's settings through a policy It's just telling you that, as it should.
The notion that it has anything to do with keeping search the default or not is like, such a silly assumption i don't know where to begin.
The feature overall came from a desire of enterprises to manage browser settings. Back then, Google was one of the first to tell you someone was doing that to you so that you knew your organization could see and control your settings.
IE had a deployment kit that let you deploy managed browser settings, but you didn't get told (this changed, eventually, i think, it's been a while)
Letting orgs change the default search engine was an explicit, designed goal, since some wanted to redirect people to their internal searches by default, etc.
There is in fact, another way to do this that is easy and doesn't give the user the same warning, and is meant for software distributors
You can just use master preferences here for this kind of thing and it is meant for this use case.
Google in fact, made this easy and officially supported, despite your claim.
It would likely be pretty silly to make this hard - end users aren't using these interfaces or tools, and distributors always know how to change this stuff .
As HN as grown in popularity, the sheer number of kneejerk reaction comments has unfortunately kept pace (IE the overall percent has not dropped. Even sadder, nobody ever goes back and edits it or replies and was like "you know what, i was probably wrong".
They feel comfortable moving on and doing it again.
It says "Managed by your organization." every time you click the menu button. It's even in a different background color and bigger margins.
If you click it, it says "Your administrator can change your browser setup remotely. Activity on this device may also be managed outside of Chromium. Learn more"
I made the policy myself and copied it myself. The remote part is purely conjecture on part of Google. The second part about further management also feels out of place.
Then on every setting that's been changed by policy there's a building icon that says "This setting has been changed by your administrator." That's probably the only message that needs to be there.
On its own it seems innocent and useful, but compare this to the number of steps you have to take to eg.: delete Google cookies.
Accurate conjecture nonetheless. If a 3rd party has dropped a managed policy file onto your install, it's reasonable to assume they can drop an updated one which does all the scary stuff at any time. It's a waste of effort for Chrome to parse the current profile when the mere presence of one can compromise security.
Nothing to see here; we can move along.
ah, so it should also be displayed if it's set to Google's preferences
they're "someone else" as equally as Debian
So Google's defaults are "un-managed" and imply no control over users' settings?
Why shouldn't the Google built Chrome binaries display the same warning and a binary from a specific linux distro should?
But by default isn't Google controlling the user's setting through a policy. The policy includes, among other things, the rule that Google is the default search engine. (Needless to say, that setting is a cash cow.)
And in fact, the user that manually changes the default policy herself, i.e., changes the default search engine to something other than Google, versus delegating the decision to a third party such as Debian or Google, cannot remove Google as a search engine choice! It is greyed out. Permanent. Chrome binary allows users to delete all the other choices, except Google.
If you read the thread linked in the comment you replied to [1], the Debian folks added a JSON file to `/etc/chromium/policies/managed` when they should have edited `/etc/chromium/master_preferences` (a different JSON file). If they had done that, there would be no message.
Everyone on the thread agrees that's a better solution.
Chromium does change the message to "This device is managed by <google workspaces domain>" if attached to Chrome Enterprise.
Moreover, defaulting to Google is also a policy.
EDIT: Apparently the Debian team agrees: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956012#72