<story><title>Fuck It, I&apos;m Going Back to Firefox</title><url>http://gizmodo.com/fuck-it-im-going-back-to-firefox-1685425815</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nvk</author><text>The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it&amp;#x27;s been about linking Google IDs with the browser. I&amp;#x27;ve lost data twice by bugs related to not having a linked ID.&lt;p&gt;Please Google, understand this; I don&amp;#x27;t want my browser linked with my Google account.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>You absolutely &lt;i&gt;must&lt;/i&gt; link your Google Chrome install to your Google ID on Windows or you will lose data.&lt;p&gt;Google Chrome now has a &amp;quot;feature&amp;quot; that will automatically reset your homepage, search settings, wipe all extensions and wipe all extension data whenever it detects an unexpected change to any of your settings files or they do not match up to the PC they are locked to.&lt;p&gt;The goal was to prevent third parties from hijacking your search engine within Chrome.  Things like bundleware installers on Windows that switch it.&lt;p&gt;The actual result is that all your settings are now locked to a specific PC and will be reset anytime anything changes.  As the developer of Google Chrome Portable, this means only your bookmarks move with you as you move PCs unless you&amp;#x27;re logged in.  This also means that even if you backup your Chrome install, if your PC dies, you can not restore that Chrome install on another PC.  Your bookmarks will be restored, but you will lose your settings, extensions, and passwords since your profile was moved to a new PC.&lt;p&gt;This stands in stark contrast to Firefox which is completely self-contained.  If a third party bundleware installer hijacks your search engine or homepage, you can simply set them back as they should be.  All your extensions, extension settings, etc will continue working as expected whether or not you opt to use Firefox Sync.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fuck It, I&apos;m Going Back to Firefox</title><url>http://gizmodo.com/fuck-it-im-going-back-to-firefox-1685425815</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nvk</author><text>The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it&amp;#x27;s been about linking Google IDs with the browser. I&amp;#x27;ve lost data twice by bugs related to not having a linked ID.&lt;p&gt;Please Google, understand this; I don&amp;#x27;t want my browser linked with my Google account.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>austenallred</author><text>You should probably understand this: Google doesn&amp;#x27;t give a shit.&lt;p&gt;The total market share of people who care about whether or not their browser is linked with their Google account is probably less than one percent. The value they get from knowing everything you do online? I&amp;#x27;m not sure how you&amp;#x27;d calculate that, but I&amp;#x27;m positive it&amp;#x27;s greater than losing the tiny number of hackers who are protective of their personal data.&lt;p&gt;Google will continue to build the browser under the assumption that your browser will be linked with your Google account. If you don&amp;#x27;t link, you&amp;#x27;ll be a permanent edge case.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to link your account, it&amp;#x27;s much easier to just switch browsers.</text></comment>