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- Hacker News
- 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.
by procaryote - Also support Ladybird. It's not generally usable just yet, but the strides its taking forward are immense.by rf15
- Folks,
We must do something about Google. They ruin the www.
by shevy-java - Hey, let’s not forget Cloudflareby vehemenz
- Yes, switch to Firefox, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527748by fsflover
- I just don't understand why people keep using Chrome.by MetroWind
- 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.
- 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.
by lapcat - Coincidently, I ran into this same situation last week. Spent way too much time trying to delete some accidental search query from pasting something in the url bar. Tried a bunch of things without luck. Had to manually delete records in a couple of SQLite files under the Chrome profile to make it go away.by atoa
- No mention of chrome://settings/clearBrowserData
Use this before using chrome://settings/siteData
Not sure if this is still the case with current versions
One of the top comments in this thread suggests Chrome is a keylogger
https://thomascountz.com/2025/07/17/chromes-ssl-bypass-cheat...
This blog calls this a "cheat code". One could also call it a keylogger as that's what it feels like when using it; there's no display of the characters being typed
Using a local TLS forward proxy is a more effective way to control cookies than using Chrome settings. Of course, Google tries to make this more difficult with the requirement for the "cheat code" but typing into the keyloagger is not always necessary, not every site requires the "cheat code"
- 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.by righthand
- 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.by mgiampapa
- It's convenient that "zombie processes" only retain data for Google-owned sites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49583517by troupo
- 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?by frankacter
- Why would that cause only Google’s info to be preserved across sessions, though? Somewhere, Google are privileging their own data and preventing it from being deleted when other data are deleted and the browser is configured so everything should be gone.by freeAgent
- It would still be a (albeit convenient for google) bug, as the setting indicates closing all windows as the trigger for deletion.by stkdump
- > 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.
by cute_boi - 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?
by iririririr - Remember AMP?
Baby steps and they’ll try again.
- It's to protect against scrapers that aren't running JavaScript. Makes it more costly for them.by arbol
- > 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
by troupo - Interesting observation: As soon as you right click on a link, it switches from that to https://www.google.com/url?...by 1e1a
- 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.
by avaer - 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.
by flyingshelf - In the article he explains he’s not signed into Chrome nor Google during the experiment.by demibabs
- This is what the “Allow Chrome sign-in” setting is for and is turned off by the post author.by ande-mnoc
- It's okay, they're not a monopoly according to this administration. Nothing to see here, carry on!by fedpost
- Blame the judges . Two judges determined Google was a monopoly but the judges declined to take drastic recourse.
It’s fun to bang on the anti administration drum but this is a court thing. Edit: they did do the thing you said they didn’t
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-wins-signi...
by stogot - 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.
by shevy-java - Google and the rest of the billionaire class thank you for ensuring everyone is too divided by red/blue tribalism to ever have enough unity to mount a fight against them. Well done!