[gambiting]

How is this not a feature then? Yes I'm ok with my browsing history and bookmarks and tabs and extensions and everything else being synced using google servers because it makes my life easier.

To give another example - my Volvo allows me to track every single journey in the app, seeing the electricity/petrol consumption, mileage, start/end date.....

Yes it means Volvo now knows all of my travel history. But it also means I get access to functionality that is useful to me.

If that's not a feature to you, then don't use it.

The question was "why would anyone prefer Chrome" - because it's a very good browser which has useful features. Like, it's not rocket science.

[jevoten]

> Yes it means Volvo now knows all of my travel history.

No it doesn't. The features you listed could be implemented without the data reaching Volvo's servers at all, or reaching them in only an encrypted form, to which only you have the key. A better way to phrase it is that Volvo allows you to track your journeys, and they spy on you. The two features are separate.

95% of the time, the privacy-convenience tradeoff is nothing but a false excuse for spyware.

[raxxorrax]

Agreed. Since people don't seem to care to share private details with giant companies, those that do get shafted by user behavior like this.

It has everything to do with what you allow companies to do. A few years ago the standard mobile app behavior wouldn't be acceptable on Desktop. User expectations have suffered since then.

[f1refly]

What do you gain from having every single journey in your app and seeing the fuel consumption? Have you ever actually looked at those stats? I think I've never in my life been in a situation where I thought "Dang, I wish I knew how much kilometers my last 18 trips where, if only I had some kind of tracking device that kept these stats for me!"

[gambiting]

>>Have you ever actually looked at those stats?

Literally all the time. It's a PHEV, and maybe not for every journey, but for 8/10 journeys I will look how many kWh of electricity and litres of petrol were consumed, and how many kWh of electricity have been regenerated. When I drive I try to stay in EV mode as long as possible, and regenerate power as much as I can and looking at those stats after every journey gives me a lot of satisfaction. I've driven across Europe last year and it was great to see detailed stats for the entire journey.

It's literally one of my favourite things about this car for me, alongside the ability to pre-heat and pre-cool it remotely.

Edit: also, I don't use it this way, but I know people find the online journal hugely useful for tracking business miles, you can just download an .xml with all trips from the app and that makes it super easy claiming tax/fuel costs back.

[f1refly]

So your argument is "I like to look at it". Which is legitimate, but honestly does not convince me. My car reports stats on my dash, which works for me.

I don't think people need to record trips on non-shared business cars here.

[rightbyte]

And if you need that, my -98 Volvo got a little pin on the dash you can press to zero a sub-odometer. It also reset the fuel consumption average. So, ye, no need for spyware.

Google biggest sin is normalizing all these spywares embedded in everything. It is spreading everywhere, even my Samsung TV, and legislators are like 10 years behind were they should have started to "GDPR" everything.

[gambiting]

>>And if you need that, my -98 Volvo got a little pin on the dash you can press to zero a sub-odometer. It also reset the fuel consumption average. So, ye, no need for spyware.

Not sure how this would work in a PHEV where the car is seamlessly switching between EV and ICE running, or in fact compliments ICE with the EV motor. You need the internal reads from the ECU to know exactly how much electricity/petrol was consumed.

You could - of course - provide that without syncing it externally to any servers and then avoid the whole privacy issue.