(not a chrome user, but:) my understanding is that now if you log into google (e.g. a gmail account), you automatically get logged into chrome, including Chrome Sync.
That is not at all my understanding. If you don't have sync enabled, nothing automatically enables sync. You have to go through a large confirmation dialog (with an "undo" button) to enable sync.
You’re being downvoted, but this is exactly the concern that a sweeping change like this provokes. Who’s to say Google won’t decide that a lack of sync is a problem they can silently fix too?
Meanwhile: whatever color you want to shade in the "pattern" with, this subthread starts with a claim that is falsifiable, and also actually false. So please don't pretend like I'm arguing from abstractions here.
Yeah my account was signed in and syncing when, prior to the update, I explicitly turned off sync so that was alarming to me. I immediately turned off syncing and now I can't trust Google to obey my settings anymore. They randomly turn on syncing when I use Google voice assistant on my Android phone.
Yes, you automatically get logged into chrome. Supposedly sync will not automatically be enabled, but if you ever enabled it in the past it will be turned back on for your chrome session as well. It's unclear what happens to old (pre-login) history and cookies when this happens.