Over the weekend, Google found themselves in the middle of a small internet uproar over a change in Chrome. It turns out the situation is not as sinister as people originally thought. In short, Chrome 69 shows the user’s Google profile photo in the status bar when they sign into a Google product. However, this does not mean the user is signed into Chrome Sync.
The outcry came from people who assumed the profile photo meant they were signed into the browser and all of their information was being tracked by Google. Adrienne Porter Felt, a Google engineer, took to Twitter to explain what is going on here. The profile photo is meant to serve as a reminder to the user that they are signed into a Google service, not the browser. There is an extra step required to turn on Chrome Sync.
Hi all, I want to share more info about recent changes to Chrome sign-in. Chrome desktop now tells you that you’re “signed in” whenever you’re signed in to a Google website. This does NOT mean that Chrome is automatically sending your browsing history to your Google account! 1/
— Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) September 24, 2018
Adrienne explains that this feature was created to prevent people from staying logged in to Google services on shared computers. The user can then easily sign out of the Google services by clicking the profile photo instead of visiting all the services separately. It’s really just a heads-up notification to show your login state.
My teammates made this change to prevent surprises in a shared device scenario. In the past, people would sometimes sign out of the content area and think that meant they were no longer signed into Chrome, which could cause problems on a shared device. 3/
— Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) September 24, 2018
Some people are still not happy about this change as it could be used to get more people to turn on Chrome Sync. More people syncing data is obviously a good thing for Google, but this doesn’t seem to be a sneaky trick. The user still has to make the conscious choice to sign in and sync their information.
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