Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings (lapcatsoftware.com)

412 pointsby ExMachina7311 hours ago61 comments

liquid_thyme 4 hours ago

Chrome may be an excellent browser, but the venn diagram overlap with malware keeps getting larger.

shevy-java an hour ago

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.

fedpost 8 hours ago

It's okay, they're not a monopoly according to this administration. Nothing to see here, carry on!

pavon 7 hours ago

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).

eesmith 2 hours ago

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...

pampas 6 hours ago

No politicians are going to fight a media company. They're in the PR and advertising supply chain.

lostlogin 5 hours ago

‘Lake America’ buys breathing time too.

shevy-java an hour ago

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.

mgiampapa 8 hours ago

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.

frankacter 8 hours ago

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?

Tempest1981 7 hours ago

Microsoft Edge does this too, iirc, for "Startup Boost".

lapcat 5 hours ago

> Wonder if OP is experiencing a version of that on his Mac?

No.

stkdump 6 hours ago

It would still be a (albeit convenient for google) bug, as the setting indicates closing all windows as the trigger for deletion.

troupo an hour ago

It's convenient that "zombie processes" only retain data for Google-owned sites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49583517

flyingshelf 7 hours ago

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.

demibabs 7 hours ago

In the article he explains he’s not signed into Chrome nor Google during the experiment.

ande-mnoc 7 hours ago

This is what the “Allow Chrome sign-in” setting is for and is turned off by the post author.

Zarathustra30 6 hours ago

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.

lapcat 5 hours ago

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.

netsharc 3 hours ago

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...

jrflowers an hour ago

Looks like a lot of the other folks here read the post

procaryote 3 hours ago

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.

shevy-java an hour ago

Folks,

We must do something about Google. They ruin the www.

vehemenz 35 minutes ago

Hey, let’s not forget Cloudflare

est 5 hours ago

I used to search on google.ca exclusively with disabled js and cookie

Until the day it no longer works. Sad.

righthand 6 hours ago

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.

cute_boi 7 hours ago

> 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.

avaer 5 hours ago

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.

SV_BubbleTime 5 hours ago

Remember AMP?

Baby steps and they’ll try again.

iririririr 4 hours ago

they don't have to! they remembered they control all browsers. much easier for the same goals they had with amp

nubinetwork 2 hours ago

Google still uses amp on websites with a lot of ads... go figure that the king of ads dislikes some ads.

1e1a 4 hours ago

Interesting observation: As soon as you right click on a link, it switches from that to https://www.google.com/url?...

iririririr 4 hours ago

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?

troupo an hour ago

> 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

thinker34 8 hours ago

>> 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.

LastTrain 8 hours ago

Hanlon’s Razor applies to human behavior, not corporations.

tehlike 7 hours ago

Engineers are humans.

edoceo 7 hours ago

Corporations are not, they're made of humans but they behave worse than an individual.

isncjwjxjwnd 6 hours ago

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.

rectang 6 hours ago

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.

anticensor 6 hours ago

Corporations are just groups of people working under a common name towards a common goal, even when that goal is flimsy or bad.

b112 3 hours ago

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)

TeMPOraL 3 hours ago

> 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.

cute_boi 7 hours ago

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.

charcircuit 6 hours ago

>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.

cute_boi 6 hours ago

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.

tehlike 6 hours ago

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.

jasomill 4 hours ago

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.

Geezus_42 an hour ago

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.

alance 20 minutes ago

Does the same behaviour manifest in Chromium?

tjpnz 6 hours ago

Google needs to be broken up.

bergheim 5 hours ago

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!