Google tries out new Chrome function on major company servers without telling. This could never go wrong!

[Tellos]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-fixes-white-screen-problem-in-chrome-admins-furious/

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/11/15/google-chrome-white-screen-of-death-browsers-crash-as-google-tests-new-feature/#6075518c1188

 

So to summarize Google tried out a new function causing many Citrix and similar VM systems to utterly fail at loading chrome pages. IT departments are furious that this was done without telling them.

 

Quote

 

"When WebContent Occlusion is enabled, Chrome will detect when a tab is not being used and make its content hidden to reduce resources and cause less battery drain.

While this feature was being tested on Chrome Beta users for some time, it was not properly tested in enterprise terminal server environments.

This became evident in Citrix or Terminal Server environments when a user locked their screen, every other user on that server would have their Chrome tabs suddenly become a white screen."

 

 

 

This is concerning that Google apparently things making multi million dollar or larger company servers into test beds without consent. To my mind this should end in Google being fined very harshly and informed if any further instances occur it will be bankrupted and liquidated.

 

May sound harsh and I love free markets but this is playing with other company assets without permission and should be a fast track to bankruptcy. Googles apparently lack of ability to grasp that it is not used solely by windows and android users in desktop markets is staggering. The fact is any IT admin knows once you hit enterprise level things change drastically and single changes can throw entire sections out of whack if done in a ham fisted manner.

 

 

Quote

Well, not quite. The incident has left many business users questioning why Google could push out these kinds of changes to what are often very tightly controlled environments. ZDNet reports one sysadmin stating: "We spent the better part of yesterday trying to determine if an internal change had occurred in our environment without our knowledge. We did not realize this type of event could occur on Chrome unbeknownst to us. We are already discussing alternative options, none of them are great, but this is untenable."

 

This is to me a dangerous president for them to go thorugh and it makes IT admins now have to question if they trust google in their high stakes equipment where stability is a MUST not just a nice feature in their system. I just find this to be very scary that Google apparently thinks there is nothing wrong with this behavior.

 

Edit: edits made to try to better comply with posting guidelines.

[Pixel5]

8 minutes ago, Tellos said:

This is concerning that Google apparently things making multi million dollar or larger company servers into test beds without consent. To my mind this should end in Google being fined very harshly and informed if any further instances occur it will be bankrupted and liquidated.

i dont really see this ac concerning at all, it has been in the beta release and companies can decide how they wanna release chrome into their environment on their own.

Any good and reasonably staffed IT department will have an extra branch of their VM solutions that is running on betas or they delay the release of new updates to test internally.

 

this is not something google needs to test, this is something a company needs to test before they release such an update.

Where i work we get our chrome updates 1 month after they are officially out and only a small number of users get them right away for testing purposes.

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, Tellos said:

May sound harsh and I love free markets but this is playing with other company assets without permission and should be a fast track to bankruptcy.

I mean, every update has the chance to break stuff in unintended way, which is why if you're running an enterprise environment, you should be testing updates for your environment before rolling them out.

 

Of course that goes out the window the moment Google (or any manufacturer) has the ability to remotely enable experimental functionality in the software (which is think is what the article is saying).

 

I think as an enterprise admin I would be thinking long an hard on whether to switch to Firefox at this point.

[Tellos]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

I mean, every update has the chance to break stuff in unintended way, which is why if you're running an enterprise environment, you should be testing updates for your environment before rolling them out.

 

Of course that goes out the window the moment Google (or any manufacturer) has the ability to remotely enable experimental functionality in the software (which is think is what the article is saying).

 

I think as an enterprise admin I would be thinking long an hard on whether to switch to Firefox at this point.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

i dont really see this ac concerning at all, it has been in the beta release and companies can decide how they wanna release chrome into their environment on their own.

Any good and reasonably staffed IT department will have an extra branch of their VM solutions that is running on betas or they delay the release of new updates to test internally.

 

this is not something google needs to test, this is something a company needs to test before they release such an update.

Where i work we get our chrome updates 1 month after they are officially out and only a small number of users get them right away for testing purposes.

 

 

This was done by google without informing IT departments, they were not informed nor given a choice it was done by google on it's own decision. No time was given to test it it was flipped on.

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

i dont really see this ac concerning at all, it has been in the beta release and companies can decide how they wanna release chrome into their environment on their own.

This. As an admin it is your job to vet updates prior to release. But the article makes it sound like Google remotely enabled this functionality which was already in the software, which sounds concerning, because it would take away control from administrators who aren't aware that experimental stuff might be lurking that could be enabled at any time without an additional update.

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, Tellos said:

This was done by google without informing IT departments, they were not informed nor given a choice it was done by google on it's own decision. No time was given to test it it was flipped on.

Given Google's size and market share that would be hard to do. If anything they should publish release notes for their updates so administrators can make an informed decision on whether to install a new version or not. Like I said, I'm still unclear if this feature was part of an update or already part of a previous update but was dormant until Google flipped some remote management switch.

[Tellos]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Given Google's size and market share that would be hard to do. If anything they should publish release notes for their updates so administrators can make an informed decision on whether to install a new version or not. Like I said, I'm still unclear if this feature was part of an update or already part of a previous update but was dormant until Google flipped some remote management switch.

 

all articles indicate it was a beta INSIDE the existing M77 and M78 systems. It was dormant. But google decided and admits they decided to activate it simply because the 1% of users beta testing had reported no issues after 5 months. This was not a patch or update it was literally a switch from off to on.

 

 

Quote

"The experiment/flag has been on in beta for ~5 months. It was turned on for stable (e.g., m77, m78) via an experiment that was pushed to released Chrome Tuesday morning. Prior to that, it had been on for about 1% of M77 and M78 users for a month with no reports of issues, unfortunately. - chrome://flags shows you experiments."

 

[Vishera]

I have never trusted google,and i don't use their chrome spyware.

I try to minimize as much as possible the use of google products,they are a monopoly in a lot of markets after all.

[colonel_mortis]