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.
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).
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.”"
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.
The point is that no matter which party rules, they are bribed by big business to represent the interest of big business. Criticism without change does not really work well.
It seems to be very popular on this site to condemn surveillance capitalism and billionaires. But who built and still maintains the basis for their power, misusing it and the billions. So-called smart engineers like many of HN readers. If they rated morale higher than their personal 100Ks we would not need to wait for a government to stop the misery (in vain).
Yes, I have worked for 400,000 employees corp, then for a 70,000. For the last 15 years I have staid under 100. The pay is less, but it's easier to look into the mirror each morning.
Allow me to be anal for a moment, but what is the point of doing “if I remember correctly” for something like this?
You can very easily look up exactly when Lina Khan was appointed and get answer very quickly. Is it not worth the effort checking these things before commenting?
Ok rant over. Sorry to be an asshole. This is not your fault as much a standard which should be changed.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Fully agree. Humans are social animals who behave differently in different contexts, and the corporate context statistically ensures that the humans inside of it behave in all sorts of lamentable ways.
Yes, but the worst human in an org, has the potential to drag the whole org down. Further, people are not aligned, so groups may disagree with an act, but each lack a majority to effect change. And group infighting may mean no cooperation.
We see this in politics. Orgs are political too.
(no "political" doesn't mean US Left/Righr here. It means simply "political" which can have nothing to do with government or party politics)
Politicians are also humans, everyone working for De Beers are also human... Please stop justifying egregious behavior from company who is destroying the fabric of internet with too many useless ads....And it isn't first time they are doing it, these "engineers" were the one who removed mv2 without better ad blocks in mv3.
1. ads are not useless.
2. without ads, there would be significantly less free content for people to read.
3. politicians are human too, but not the best of us except a few. Yes.
It's hip to say ads make things worse, but reality is often much more nuanced.
My original point being, many times an external person may think something is intentional when it may very well be a bug or may be there for a good reason.
I have observed a few of those both as an external person or an internal person.
Can't remember the last time I saw an ad for something I was actually interested in. These days I am often discouraged from buying a product based on ads.
Just for your info classic ublock style doesn't work on mv3. Google have severely limited adblocking in chrome now. They deprecated very late due to pressure from people, not out of goodwill.
Useless to users, not to advertisers. And, many people like me have never purchased any products after seeing ads at least on internet.
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.
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...
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.
Yes, I have worked for 400,000 employees corp, then for a 70,000. For the last 15 years I have staid under 100. The pay is less, but it's easier to look into the mirror each morning.
you are a bit out of the loop if you think this is a partisan issue, or specifically one thats only there when trump is in charge
You can very easily look up exactly when Lina Khan was appointed and get answer very quickly. Is it not worth the effort checking these things before commenting?
Ok rant over. Sorry to be an asshole. This is not your fault as much a standard which should be changed.
She did not get appointed under Trump nor did substantial work done under his administration.
Edit: I do not necessarily disagree with your comment on the partisan aspects of this issue. This is only meant to respond to the first paragraph.
No.
Not justifying it (I don't use chrome) but that's likely what's happening here.
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.
We must do something about Google. They ruin the www.
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.
Until the day it no longer works. Sad.
Can google justify why are they doing this? I wish google will die sooner if they start behaving like this.
2) So you can't know what's searched without getting tracked
You're the product, not the customer.
Look at Google's earnings reports and see what constitutes 80-90% of their revenues and profits
why wouldn't they expand it?
Baby steps and they’ll try again.
That is a likely case. Chrome is their closed source software unlike the Chromium browser.
Exactly in the same way as humans are just groups of cells working under a common genetic identity towards a common goal.
We see this in politics. Orgs are political too.
(no "political" doesn't mean US Left/Righr here. It means simply "political" which can have nothing to do with government or party politics)
It’s their fault. The people. The humans. The ones working there. The ones knowingly employing their knowledge in service of the company.
It’s always the humans.
It's hip to say ads make things worse, but reality is often much more nuanced.
My original point being, many times an external person may think something is intentional when it may very well be a bug or may be there for a good reason.
I have observed a few of those both as an external person or an internal person.
But with fewer ads influencing their spending, readers might have more disposible income left over to fund content.
If the ads were useless, advertisers would not pay for them to exist.
>without better ad blocks in mv3
MV3 adblockers were built before MV2 was deprecated.
Useless to users, not to advertisers. And, many people like me have never purchased any products after seeing ads at least on internet.