Google Chrome Now Lets You Send Webpages To Other Devices (theverge.com) 27
Google is starting to make its Chrome 77 browser update available to Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android this week. While there are many visual changes to Chrome this time, Google is introducing a new send webpage to devices feature. From a report: You can right-click on a link and a new context menu will appear that simply lets you send links to other devices where you use Chrome. If you're using Chrome on iOS you'll need to have the app open and a small prompt will appear to accept the sent tab. The feature has started showing up on Windows, Android, and iOS versions of Chrome, but it doesn't appear to be enabled in the macOS variant just yet. Chrome has long supported the ability to browse your open and recent tabs across multiple devices, but this send to device feature just makes things a little quicker if you're moving from browsing on a PC or laptop to a phone or vice versa.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:3)
2020: Internet crashes due to worm web page attack by Russia.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a silly concern given the situation.
The worm would need access to your google chrome sync profile to issue such commands.
If you get infected and that is the case, said worm can already install any and all extensions to all of your browsers, access your synced form entries and your saved passwords.
It's like you are implying being able to do all those things isn't bad, but doing all those things plus can open a URL on your browsers is only then bad.
Any infection of your account that can access your lin
Re: (Score:2)
Either you avoid linked online chrome profiles completely, or you don't and are already greatly at risk. There's no in between at all, let alone enough in between that this one extra feature pushes things over the edge.
Never underestimate the working intelligence of the Chrome user base
Re: (Score:1)
copy pasta (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm assuming this works somewhat similarly to Apple's AirDrop. It can be useful on occasion.
It sounds like in most cases it doesn't require a response on the receiving device before launching the page, though. I'd prefer it always ask for confirmation (which is what AirDrop does).
Re: copy pasta (Score:2)
I used to have a plug-in called send tab that did exactly this.
I miss that plug-in. It was very useful
Re: copy pasta (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Chrome on iOS has had the reverse "pull" method available for a long time now.
I was hoping this was going to end up being that feature rolled out to the other platforms, because I've found that far far more useful than I would any sort of "push"
For me at least, it is basically always after the fact that I decide I want to pull up a tab on my phone that I left open at home.
Pushing a tab out feels like something that would need too much preparation in advance for me.
Although I have had the need on occasion, a
Re: (Score:1)
Formerly, I had to email myself links, which is a bit cumbersome.
Re: (Score:2)
not very useful
Quite the opposite. A useful feature that I use all the time. If I'm in the middle of reading something and I need to go somewhere, or if I find a recipe online and transfer it to my tablet for use in the kitchen.
This was working on Chrome 76 already (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yay! Another threat vector (Score:1)
Do I need to log in? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course. How else would it work? It has to know which devices are linked into your Chrome profile so it can push the page to them. Firefox works the exact same way with Firefox Sync accounts.
Re: (Score:2)
2010 (Score:3)
What year is this, 2010 or something!? https://techcrunch.com/2010/08... [techcrunch.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Like all good betas that Google releases, this one was killed in early 2016 [imgur.com]. I think they must have crippled it much earlier than that, as I had switched to Pushbullet for this a long time earlier because Chrome2Phone wasn't working any more.
Re: (Score:3)
Came here to rant about this. Damn it Google, when you retired Chrome to Phone we told you it was useful. The replacement system, going through the "recent tabs" menu, sucked. So now a decade later you realized we were right and brought it back.
What next, Google Reader is making a return?
Re: (Score:2)
At least it isn't Google Talk, Chat, Voice, Wave, G+, G+ Hangouts, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, Messages...
No, it sends it to Google, then back to you (Score:4, Informative)
We techies need to make sure that companies don't use the term "send web pages to other devices" when in fact it is "send web pages to Google's cloud servers so that you can retrieve them on other devices." This may sound obvious to us, but my parents were shocked to learn that their Ring doorbell video wasn't "sending video to my phone" that it was actually going to Amazon first. Think of all the people who were surprised to learn that Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Android Asistant were sending their voices to Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google.
It's OUR fault that people don't understand that cloud servers are involved in everything now. We need to educate them and I recommend we push back on the kind of language being used in these announcements.
Re: (Score:2)
It's OUR fault that people don't understand that cloud servers are involved in everything now.
Nope. It's out fault that people stopped caring. When you cry wolf so many times it stands to reason that people would start to ignore you. This is just the latest silly example.
The fact that it sends it to Google first is 100% completely irrelevant. Both your devices need to sync with a Google account to work. Both your devices already have history of each other, both of them already share every webpage to Google. So no this feature has precisely zero privacy impact on the end user.
Stop crying wolf man, pe
Re: (Score:2)
Both your devices need to sync with a Google account to work
But end-users don't understand that. They just think the devices talk directly to each other somehow. I know it sounds completely obvious to us, but lots of people really don't understand that fact.
I'm not sure what you mean by "crying wolf: in this case. No one is sounding alarm bells on anything, or exaggerating claims. I'm trying to make sure that everyone knows technically what is going on here without weasel-wording.
...of your choice! (Score:2)
That's mostly what the change is about.