Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings (lapcatsoftware.com)
408 points by ExMachina73 11 hours ago
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 7 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.
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
frankacter 7 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.
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.
ande-mnoc 7 hours ago
This is what the “Allow Chrome sign-in” setting is for and is turned off by the post author.
demibabs 7 hours ago
In the article he explains he’s not signed into Chrome nor Google during the experiment.
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 2 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
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 25 minutes ago
Hey, let’s not forget Cloudflare
est 4 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.
tjpnz 6 hours ago
Google needs to be broken up.
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.
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?...
troupo 44 minutes 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
iririririr 3 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?
SV_BubbleTime 5 hours ago
Remember AMP?
Baby steps and they’ll try again.
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.
iririririr 3 hours ago
they don't have to! they remembered they control all browsers. much easier for the same goals they had with amp
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.
alance 10 minutes ago
Does the same behaviour manifest in Chromium?
LastTrain 7 hours ago
Hanlon’s Razor applies to human behavior, not corporations.
tehlike 7 hours ago
Engineers are humans.
edoceo 7 hours ago
cute_boi 6 hours ago
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!