While You Sign In To a Google Website, Chrome Does not Automatically Synchronize Your Browsing History

More than the weekend, Google initiate themselves in the middle of a small internet racket over a change in Chrome. It turns out the situation is not as disturbing 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 Synchronize.

The objection 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 Synchronize.

Adrienne explains that this attribute was created to put off people from staying logged in to Google services on public 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 announcement to show your login state.

Some public is still not happy about this change as it could be used to get more people to turn on Chrome Synchronize. More people synchronizing data is visibly 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 synchronizing their information.