“Design choice was made by accounting and legal. Therefore, won’t fix” (2020)

[nightpool]

This is.... just a random internet comment made by a commenter on the chrome bugtracker with no evidence supporting it? What the Chrome team actually said was:

"We've removed support for user stylesheets from Chrome. The feature had many problems. It was used by a very small percentage of our users, was not very user-friendly (e.g. you need a high level of technical ability to use it) and was slowing down our ability to make improvements in other parts of the product.

Chrome extensions allow you to inject CSS stylesheets into pages, so it would be possible for someone to create a Chrome extension that replicates this functionality in a more user-friendly way"

You can agree with this logic or disagree with it, but it had absolutely nothing to do with Accounting or Legal in any way shape or form. Why are people acting like the linked comment has anything to do with reality?

[meitham]

Because the comment has been published two years ago in a bug tracker controlled by the Chromium devs and yet to be removed, so it almost reads as if the chromium devs agree with it and happy it didn’t come from their own accounts!

[reaperhulk]

This is an account linked to a gmail address with no other comments on the tracker. Is there any evidence this is/was a Google employee and not just a random troll in the issue tracker?

[toomim]

It's sad when computer companies put accountants and lawyers in positions of authority over the computer people.

[dudeinjapan]

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. - Hannah Arendt

[cjhopman]

I don't understand how so many people can discuss this as though it's not some random gmail account that made the comment.

[educaysean]

Is the implication that allowing custom css styling means more hidden ads?

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I am always afraid to ask, but what hidden ads ( I didn't delve in to CSS much )?

[bunbun69]

No

In that case they would've banned adblockers 8 years ago

[foota]

Seems like there's a means to accomplish the same thing, and the title here is editorialized. (and makes it sound like it's a statement from Chromium, which it doesn't seem to be.)

[mkl95]

Every engineer who has worked at some SaaS has experienced some form of this (and it's no silver lining). This particular comment does not look legit though.

[ofirg]

"Cannot simultaneously fix and keep job" In the cyberpunk dystopia we are moving towards, job fixes you!

[meitham]

I thought the whole point of these “open source” Google projects is to give an autonomy to the developers in makings decisions, so I’m quite astonished that the devs cannot make the simplest of the decisions to comply with web standards without fear of losing their jobs!

[nextaccountic]

What is the legal issue? And what does it have to do with accounting??

[patmcc]

Legal - "If users can render ads invisible we can't claim they're seeing them, and we can't charge people for them."

Accounting - "We want to charge for ads, that's where all the money comes from."

Legal - "Yah we can take this feature out, accessibility laws are a joke."

Devs - "whelp, ok"

[cjhopman]

There is none. The comment is from some random gmail account, it doesn't mean anything.

[slater]

Maybe someone has a patent on this, and accounting said "we're not gonna pay" and legal said "we don't want to get sued"?

[justrealist]

Making it too easy to violate TOS, maybe.

[readthenotes1]

Impossible to read in dark mode!

Perhaps some styling went awry?

[rurban]

(2020)