Google says privacy issue that favoured own products was a bug

Cookies and site data remained on Chrome from YouTube and Google Search, even though it should have been deleted.

(Benjamin Dada )

A Google Chrome bug apparently resulted in the search giant exempting its own websites from the browser’s cookie-clearing feature.

The issue was noticed by programmer Jeff Johnson, who noticed that the "Clear cookies and site data when you quit Chrome" setting for the Google Chrome desktop browser did not clear data for YouTube and Google Search.

Cookies are used by websites to quickly identify the user and remember their online preferences. They are used to let users log back into websites faster, at the expense of less privacy.

Site data, meanwhile, could include personal information that gets stored on the computer to be accessed during the users’ next visit.

After visiting YouTube, Google Chrome saved database storage, local storage, and “service workers”.

“Service workers” are scripts that operate features which are separate from the web page, such as push notifications and background syncing. 

Although information for other sites, such as Twitter or the Apple website, was removed, Google’s first-party products were not.

Currently, there is a workaround: users can manually add Google and YouTube in Google Chrome to a list of “Sites that can never use cookies” via the browser’s settings.

Doing that will ensure that no information, including site data, is saved in the browser.

“Perhaps this is just a Google Chrome bug, not intentional behavior, but the question is why it only affects Google sites, not non-Google sites,” Johnson wrote.

“I've tested using the latest Google Chrome version 86.0.4240.75 for macOS, but this behavior was also happening in the previous version of Chrome. I don't know when it started.”

The Independent can confirm that similar behaviour was exhibited by the same build on the Windows 10 operating system.

“We are aware of a bug in Chrome that is impacting how cookies are cleared on some first-party Google websites. We are investigating the issue, and plan to roll out a fix in the coming days,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

It is unclear when the bug was first introduced, when Google first noticed the issue, and why it seemingly only occurred on Google-owned products.

Google has been repeatedly criticised for having unclear settings in its products.

Unsealed documents from a lawsuit against Google in August show even Google’s own engineers were confused about its location settings and privacy functions.

The documents show that Google engineers attempted to make it easier for users to change how much location information is sent to the company, but one unnamed employee expressed dismay that it was so complex. 

“Speaking as a user, WTF? More specifically I **thought** I had location tracking turned off on my phone,” the software engineer said in the released chat logs.

“So our messaging around this is enough to confuse a privacy focused [Google software engineer]. That’s not good.”

Google has also been criticised by the United States Congress for having monopoly power in the search market, and there have been calls to separate some dominant tech platforms from the companies’ other businesses.