Google Brings Chrome OS User Management To Chrome

An anonymous reader writes "Google is toying with a complete revamp of the user account system in its browser. Google is essentially pulling the user management system from Chrome OS back into Chrome. The company's thinking is likely two-layered. First, it wants users to stay in the browser for as long as possible, and thus it wants the switching process to be part of Chrome as opposed to Windows, Mac, or Linux. Second, if it can teach users to have accounts in Chrome (as well as use incognito and guest modes), the learning curve will have been flattened for when they encounter Chrome OS."

Comments

Graphical terminal

[Anonymous Coward]

In the room next door I have a DEC VT240 from around 1990 which is capable of displaying text and vector graphics using the ReGIS instruction set. I'm so happy to see that, 24 years later, Google is reviving the graphical dumb terminal. Ah! what carefree times of speed and gracefulness. It's also nice to see that we're not bothering with company-owned servers on the other end, instead hiring out computing power in a time-tested fashion that would have been familiar to contracting with IBM in the '60s. What a wonderful time that was! Flowers in rifles, dirty bare feet, and nobody ever got fired for buying (or dressing) Blue. I hope we don't get into any silly, long, unwinnable wars, though.

Re:Graphical terminal

[BitZtream]

Yea, its as if no one actually left standing understand why we stopped doing that.

Re:I have read the title 5 times, I still dont get

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're failing to understand the difference between "Chrome OS" (the operating system for Chrome Books) and "Chrome" (the browser).

Re:This sounds oddly disturbing

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps because you are poorly informed?

Just stop already

[s.petry]

Google Chrome has become as bad as IE in terms of hidden settings, or settings that are just not there. In Opera and Firefox, I have no issues accessing numerous networks. I can change network settings on the fly and have different settings for different browsers. With Chrome and IE I need a new browser installation everywhere, because Chrome either uses no settings or IE settings. Being able to set proxies and network settings in an add on browser is an important feature for testing.

On the security side, remembering user passwords and stuffing them into either and unencrypted DB or an Encrypted DB that the user has zero control over is not acceptable. Especially when I don't trust either MS or Google as far as I can spit with my privacy. They have abused that trust far too often for me not to notice these things.

And now they are making a big deal about not adding missing and important functionality (especially for those in the tech crowd that want/need it), but those same broken and missing "features" will now be available for multiple users in the same browser installation in the same log-in. Wow, really?

If they were adding Kiosk features, I'd be impressed. Let admins manage browser settings from a global repository for different users in the same browser installation. That's not what they are doing though. This will however add to their ability to target advertisements and raise rates for advertisers. They will know that the wife is using the browser and pepper her with just the right products, while targeting the husband with his.

Back on the security rant, is not the best option to train people not to share an account? Does Chrome not save individual user settings in their home directory already? I don't know honestly, I have Chrome on my work PC because it's part of our base image. I even launch it on occasion to see if it ever improves, and it doesn't. So I don't really use it or care where it stores settings.

Look, if all you are worried about in a browser is loading pages as fast as possible I'm sure Chrome is great. Loading pages faster than people can read them is a very useless ability for people that need to actually read content. I don't spend all day looking at Google Images, or what ever people are doing where this matters. Quite frankly, I don't know anyone that does either. I'm sure the crowd exists, because that's where all the development from Microsoft and Google is focused.

Re:Just stop already

[jrumney]

Google Chrome has become as bad as IE in terms of hidden settings, or settings that are just not there. In Opera and Firefox, I have no issues accessing numerous networks. I can change network settings on the fly and have different settings for different browsers. With Chrome and IE I need a new browser installation everywhere, because Chrome either uses no settings or IE settings. Being able to set proxies and network settings in an add on browser is an important feature for testing.

IE at least has proxy support that works. Chrome is singularly terrible in this respect. Try using a proxy script with a file URL, pointing to an authenticated proxy and move between networks without closing the browser (Chrome now keeps a process running in the background even if you closed all your Windows, so difficult to avoid), and you'll see what I mean.

Re:Just stop already

[s.petry]

I'm not sure I was clear enough with the problem. IE has proxy settings that work, sure. I launch Firefox and Opera to access Dev and QA environments with different settings than I need for normal browsing. I often need to change this on the fly to access other networks, so can keep multiple settings handy for either Firefox or Opera. Chrome has no settings to change, it uses the same exact settings as IE. If I set Windows to access a proxy there is no separation either, so all of my other connections drop.

A proxy script does not help, because I can't point different browsers to different proxies on the fly. I could always point Firefox at QA and always point Opera to Dev, but I'm screwed when I need to access something else. Working at a good sized ISP I have at least 4 different environments to access regularly.

Re:Just stop already

[_merlin]

You're very much a minority case. Most people want system-wide proxy settings. It annoys me that Firefox needs its own proxy settings. I want to set/change proxy settings once and have all my applications switch over. I don't want to have to mess with per-application settings.

Stupid greedy selfish feature

[EmperorOfCanada]

This is a classic example of a feature designed by an MBA and probably not asked for by a single user in the universe. Why would Google let their sleazy MBAs design features, why would they even have sleazy MBAs working there?

Re:Stupid greedy selfish feature

[Draconix]

Why would Google let their sleazy MBAs design features, why would they even have sleazy MBAs working there?

Because "don't be evil" and "publicly traded corporation" don't mix well.

Re:I care, because Firefox is going to copy this.

[Rashkae]

Actually, Firefox did it first. Profiles, and the profile Manager have been part of Firefox since the beginning, or so near, I can't remember otherwise. It's just bypassed on start-up by default, unless you know how to start with Profile Manager to get it going.

Re: I care, because Firefox is going to copy this.

[corychristison]

I'm not certain when, but it was in there long before Firefox/Phoenix was an idea.

I recall using profiles with Netscape Navigator in the late 90's.

Has been in Chrome for a while now.

[lemur3]

like firefox with its about:config the settings discussed in TFA have been in chromes chrome://flags for a least 6 months..

its the flags page and you can mess with options such as...:
Enable New Profile Management System
Enable New Avatar Menu
Enable Google Profile Name and icon

It is now the default, apparently.. in Canary.. (the alpha build) but this has been an option for a while now in the regular Chrome builds...... I used it for about a week and wasn't all that fond of it due to it wanting my password.. but maybe it was some option I had enabled that caused that.