I feel like there's some implied assumption here that this change lets Google do something evil that they couldn't do before, but I don't really see what.
If you're logged into Google properties (independent of browser), Google can already track you across most of the internet, via their Ads and Analytics embedded in a rather large percentage of web sites. If you don't want Google to track you on non-Google web sites, then you really need to use separate browser profiles (or separate browsers). Have one profile for Google properties and a separate one for other things.
Ironically, Chrome has really good multi-profile support. It's easy to have different Chrome windows running different profiles, each of which has all its own settings, storage, login state, etc. Give each one a different theme to make it easy to tell which profile you're using.
Firefox has a concept of profiles but AFAICT you can only run one profile at a time. :(
> Firefox has a concept of profiles but AFAICT you can only run one profile at a time. :(
You can have one primary firefox instance, and any number of instances that have the "--no-remote" flag set, each running different profiles. Any links you click outside of firefox (e.g. xdg-open) will use the primary firefox.
The 'firefox --no-remote -P' trick has worked for longer than chrome has existed and I've been using it to juggle about 15 profiles since firefox 3, usually having 4 different firefox instances open with 4 different profiles.
The more user-friendly way to do this is with firefox containers though.
What is the memory hit though. Do the separate profile processes share some of the library memory or do they each reuse a lot of memory. I’d assume chrome profiles being natively supported via a easy GUI means the separate profile processes are able to share memory??
If you're logged into Google properties (independent of browser), Google can already track you across most of the internet, via their Ads and Analytics embedded in a rather large percentage of web sites. If you don't want Google to track you on non-Google web sites, then you really need to use separate browser profiles (or separate browsers). Have one profile for Google properties and a separate one for other things.
Ironically, Chrome has really good multi-profile support. It's easy to have different Chrome windows running different profiles, each of which has all its own settings, storage, login state, etc. Give each one a different theme to make it easy to tell which profile you're using.
Firefox has a concept of profiles but AFAICT you can only run one profile at a time. :(