Chrome Browser Updates not so Friendly

Chrome Browser Updates not so Friendly
Mark Vang walks through the new Chrome Browser updates and what they mean as a user.

#chromebrowsertips  

Originally shared by ****

Subtle changes to Google Chrome browser.

It seems Google has rolled out a change to the Chrome browser that might have slipped notice for many.

For a while now Google Chrome has been nudging me to create user profiles. I guess the idea is to store settings like bookmarks, account into, etc. I guess this is supposed to make things easier, but in my experience it's kinda annoying when multiple Google accounts are used by the same person and Chrome doesn't seem to understand the user is logged into a different account.

In my experience the add new account feature has been broken for some time. When I use this feature, it's possible to open Gmail or Drive as the previous account which is confusing as hell so I just avoid letting Chrome manage accounts altogether.

Now Chrome seems to be forcing us to create user profiles which adds another layer to the mess.

In the olden days, the browser stored bookmarks, history, etc. in the browser settings but now it seems Google has decided these should all be stored in user profiles.

This I learned the hard way today when I spotted some user profiles in my browsers which I didn't remember setting up - so I deleted them.

That also wiped the browser bookmarks and other settings - since these are no longer managed by the browser they are managed by the user profile.

On closer inspection, I noticed a new little tab at the top right of Chrome (red arrows) which I don't recall seeing a couple of days ago. So I'm guessing this may be a recent change.

I'm still not quite clear on the details here since I don't use user profiles myself, but it seems they were created on my behalf when this change rolled out. 

In the image I've provided two examples... user profiles "Sneaky" and "Petals" were not created by me. I suspect they were created by Chrome at some point. Or "Sneaky" and "Petals" are hackers and my computer has been pwned?!

When I deleted these strange user accounts - my browser settings - including tons of bookmarks, were lost too.

Is it possible that the Chrome devs are so keen on making Chrome into an OS/desktop for Chromebook they forgot some folks just use it as a browser?

I guess if I want my bookmarks back I need to dig through my backups to see if Sneaky and Petals are still around.

#chrome   #chromebrowser