Everybody with basic reading abilities already knew that “incognito” is just “not saving stuff locally”. Sites can track you regardlessly. With any browser.
99.99999% of users don’t know this… People who work in IT knows it and that’s about it.
This is also why Google search is still popular too, people don’t know about any alternatives and are afraid to use something else even. They don’t even know why they may want to use something else. It’s ridiculous.
I can imagine a reasonable user who doesn’t look into it beyond the old warning text being aware that incognito’s purpose is to not store browsing history and therefore assuming that somehow impacts Google’s ability to know where you’ve been. Like, they might know it doesn’t stop trackers but assume not having the history logged means it’s not there for Google to take. Or speaking more generally, they could’ve taken it to mean “we won’t track you, but we can’t do anything about others doing so.”
I wouldn’t say it just relied on basic reading abilities, as you could easily be misled if your mental model for how tracking and data collection works was just a bit off.
Everybody with basic reading abilities already knew that “incognito” is just “not saving stuff locally”. Sites can track you regardlessly. With any browser.
99.99999% of users don’t know this… People who work in IT knows it and that’s about it.
This is also why Google search is still popular too, people don’t know about any alternatives and are afraid to use something else even. They don’t even know why they may want to use something else. It’s ridiculous.
Yeah, but “not knowing” is not (entirely?) Google’s fault.
I can imagine a reasonable user who doesn’t look into it beyond the old warning text being aware that incognito’s purpose is to not store browsing history and therefore assuming that somehow impacts Google’s ability to know where you’ve been. Like, they might know it doesn’t stop trackers but assume not having the history logged means it’s not there for Google to take. Or speaking more generally, they could’ve taken it to mean “we won’t track you, but we can’t do anything about others doing so.”
I wouldn’t say it just relied on basic reading abilities, as you could easily be misled if your mental model for how tracking and data collection works was just a bit off.
Yes, often misunderstood, you do the same with Cookie Autodelete or Site Bleacher extensions.