Chrome bug again spares Google.com from data deletion — SkimNews
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- The author reproduced a new Chrome bug on two Macs running Chrome version 152.0.7977.83 where www.google.com site data persists despite the setting to delete site data when all windows close
- Google previously fixed a similar bug six years ago, after the same author published a blog post that drew coverage from The Register, The Verge, Gizmodo, and Hacker News
- The persisted data consists of Cookies, Local Storage, and Session Storage, and survives both closing the browser window and quitting/relaunching Chrome entirely
- The bug occurs even when the user is not signed into Chrome, has sign-in disabled, and uses DuckDuckGo as the default search engine — ruling out user-account settings as the cause
- The author invokes Hanlon's razor but says "Google has no excuse for incompetence either," urging the company to add unit tests for site data handling
- Google Search results for non-signed-in users now use opaque https://www.google.com/goto?url= redirects rather than showing destination site URLs, a related complaint the author raises
Why it matters: Users who explicitly opted to delete all site data on close are finding that Google.com — the world's most-trafficked site — retains Cookies, Local Storage, and Session Storage against their stated preference. The fact that this exact regression reappeared six years after a public fix calls Chrome's QA for privacy controls into question.
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