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Google Chrome

Google To Cut Off Chrome Sync for Older Browser Versions (google.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Google says it will end Chrome Sync support for browser versions more than four years old starting in early 2025. Users running outdated Chrome versions will see error messages prompting them to update their browsers to maintain access to synced data across devices. Those unable to update to newer versions will permanently lose the syncing feature, according to the firm.

Google To Cut Off Chrome Sync for Older Browser Versions More | Reply

Google To Cut Off Chrome Sync for Older Browser Versions

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  • Woo-hoo (Score:2)

    by ugen ( 93902 )

    No need to explicitly block this privacy violation, then?

    • Chrome Sync isn't mandatory (you can disable it), and you can enable it to use a local passphrase (that must be entered manually on each device) that will encrypt all of the synced contents client side before uploading it to Google if you do have it on.

      People that don't trust either option (that disabling sync truly disables the synchronization of data with Google, or that the local passphrase doesn't really meaningfully encrypt the data in a manner in which Google can't read it later) are likely using a
      • It is outrageous all the hoops we have to go through to protect ourselves from a company that is pretending to be working for us and once claimed to be "do no evil".

        If the EU wants to go after big tech, Google's spying on EVERYBODY is where it should start, not the Chinese giving kids bad video recommendations.

        • The hoops one has to go through is either not sign into it, or not install that specific browser but another one which is functionally nigh identical and typically less effort to install since it's typically available in the repositories of whatever operating system one is using.

          Like with any sync, one has to go out of one's way to enable it. It's an active, opt-in feature one can elect to use or not.

          • You have addressed one of the hoops we have to go through to stop Google snooping on us.

            There are many, many more.

            Which is the point: "It is outrageous all the hoops we have to go through"

            Time for the EU to make ALL snooping opt in. Starting with compulsory opt-in-only cookies. No ifs or buts.

            • You didn't mention any such hoops with this sync feature. It has to be enabled. One has to put in strictly more effort to enable it than to not enable it.

              I'd like there to be some legally binding standard that can be selected as a browser setting so I don't get that annoying popup every time on every website though, because the irony is that it can't remember if one say “no”, so one is simply met with it again the next time ad nauseam.

  • Great! Well done Google. (Score:3)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @11:30AM (#65125125)

    Everthing we collectivelly as "the web" and do to nudge people away from 4 year old browsers that stoped getting security updates a while ago is a good move and good news.

    FireFox kicked and screamed all the way to their current model, but is the best model.

    One ESR for a year + change, Ideal for people who can not (or do not want to) have to keep abreast of browser rapid pace of change. And one "once every ~four weeks" release.
    Chromium is crap, with "Once every ~4 weeks" and that's it.
    Safary is worse, with a "who knows when the next release will come? we are not commiting" model.

    So, again, google has to be applauded. Update your chrome please, even if you change your browser to something else, please, run a fully secure browser, with active security patch development.

    * Written from FireFox ESR 128.6.0 on MacOS Sequoia 15.3

     

    • Why exactly do we need constant releases?

      And why kill a feature on older versions? Could it possibly be to coerce users into the latest privacy raping technologies?

      This is the company with the motto, "We only do evil".

      What are you applauding here?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by abulafia ( 7826 )
        I'm about the last to defend Google - I use nothing of theirs and block their AS at home.

        But the answer to your question is of course security.

        Here's the CVE history for Chrome: https://www.cvedetails.com/pro... [cvedetails.com]

        I don't know, maybe for some reason you don't care if you get rooted. I think most people do.

      • Why exactly do we need constant releases?

        I do not know why we need constant releases, that's why I use Firefox ESR (one release a year). Maybe you did not read the part where I said:

        * Written from FireFox ESR 128.6.0

        And why kill a feature on older versions? Could it possibly be to coerce users into the latest privacy raping technologies?

        Your guess is as good as mine. My guess is to add another nudge for people to move to a browser with actively developed security patches... And if they leave Chrome for something other less privacy raping, even better.
        Between being privacy raped by google or being privacy raped by some chinese/nork/russian/five-eyes hacker, I preffer door number 3, get an updated brows

      • You need constant releases because constantly new security problems are being discovered, new features are being added and new web standards are being included.

        You need to kill features on older versions when they fundamentally break between newer version. The issue of cloud syncing an old browser to a constantly updated platform is a big one. Not only do you need to test for the older system but you need to manage a system where part of the syncing features breaks. The simple example of the top of my head

    • Yeah, nothing says progress and "right way to do this" than an API that's a constantly changing moving target, and end users being forced to put up with unnecessary and unwanted user interface changes every few years or else lose access to an increasingly large amount of the web despite there being no link between the former and latter.

      No, Firefox did not get this one right, and neither did Chrome.

    • I'd like to know why security is always based on timelines, rather than actual knowledge of exploits.

      No matter how you feel about updates and planned obsolescence from an emotional standpoint, the reality is that almost all security policies are arbitrary bullshit.

      keep abreast of browser rapid pace of change.

      Call me a dinosaur if you like, but the World Wide Web has been around for over 30 years and is very mature. I'm getting a bit sick of web sites telling me that my fork of Firefox is "not supported". Browsers don't need to change except to keep

    • Reply from Firefox 134.0.2: And sync works just fine between Firefox on Linux, Windows, Android.

  • If you're using modern browsers, you should be using the latest version, JavaScript is so complex that using an old version just exposes you to a toxic soup of CVEs. Yet it sucks that old computers and devices lose support (Linux/Jailbreaking can get a few more years of use but even that has limits), but having your data ransomed by North Korea costs even more. As someone who remembers that IE6 era of web dev, I don't want to have to skip on features because of companies intentionally using old versions.

    • Re:Stop the new IE6. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @11:46AM (#65125183) Journal
      I don't want to have to skip on features because of companies intentionally using old versions.

      We don't need "features". We need web sites which work and don't require thirty scripts just to display a logon page.

      The enshittifcation of the web with all this nonsense needs to stop. Every web designer should have to pass a test: using only a text editor, create a web page which has 'Hello world' on it. I'd be willing to bet a fair number don't even know what the opening and closing tags are without having to look them up.

      • Wouldn't that be nice? All the css that editors throw in there, you can turn a half k of text into a meg of unreadable page source.

        Every damn script should have to be in the footer of the page source. I don't care if the server is blending it on on the fly, but everything your browser shows you should come from the same source. It'd solve a lot of problems at the expense of advertisers and malicious coders having to work a little harder to abuse us.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Every damn script should have to be in the footer of the page source. I don't care if the server is blending it on on the fly, but everything your browser shows you should come from the same source.

          All javascript contained in the page source is not the same as all content files coming from the same source, so I'm uncertain precisely what you mean. That said...

          BIG NO to every script being within the (footer of the) page source. It's FAR more efficient for everyone involved to have javascript delivered in separate files. That allows your browser to cache those separate from the page content so that subsequent page loads (other pages or reloads) don't have to refetch all that data. If you're after the pe

      • We don't need "features". We need web sites which work and don't require thirty scripts just to display a logon page.

        He says, ironically not realising that web standards evolve continuously and that some website will stop working when the "features" they depend on aren't added to a browser.

        You may want something stable and old, go for it. There's an old firefox version out there for you. The rest of the world shouldn't sit on their thumbs because of your *wants* not *needs*. You don't *want* features. Other people do.

  • Can anyone provide any recommendations for alternatives?

    In particular, I'd be interested in something that can sync bookmarks between browsers running on multiple platforms of multiple types (ex. firefox on my desktop, chrome on chromebook, safari on iPhone, etc..), and would prefer if the sync process didn't rely on a specific service provider (ex. was done via distributed fashion, or could use any number of network sync'd filesystems as backends, or something else).

    I know Chrome Sync handles more than jus

  • Older versions are more successful at blocking ads.

  • This makes sense. Every time you release a new version, you need to test syncing between the new version on every platform against every old version on every platform, probably including OS major versions. Limiting this to only four years of old versions will make this much easier.

    Or, I guess, it could be some weird conspiracy theory. Bigfoot is using ad blockers in a pizza shop basement to EAT YOUR PRIVACY, or something like that. Who knows, this seems to be a post-factual era.

  • People on now unsupported OS's like Win7 which already stopped receiving Chrome updates about 2 years ago

  • I was working with a variety of operating systems, and it was sure convenient that Chrome could keep everything in sync.

    Then they stopped supporting sync on older versions of Windows. Now they're just going to stop supporting sync on anything a few years old?

    I wasn't expecting to have to search for new web browsers again. It seemed like a considerably mature technology that didn't need screwing with.

  • and phones and tablets,

    whereas these devices might reasonably last twice that long.

    There ought to be a law preventing this kind of forced obsolescence.
    • Yeah, this! A neighbor gave me a 2010-ish Mac Mini (High Sierra), and I'm just getting the hang of Mac OS, and now Chrome (on it) won't sync... can't install newer releases of much on it, so apparently, I'm supposed to toss it in the shredder because it's "older"... even though it works (tried it, and the Mac works fine for YouTube 720P). I'll check out XBrowserSync and see if it'll work.

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