So ever since /. and Ars Technica reported about the Google Browser Sync, I’ve been using it for the past week or so and here are my comments and opinions.
I wouldn’t say this is the best firefox extension ever or wouldn’t say this is unique and the first of its kind, but I would say it’s a heck of a lot better than what was out there. I’ve tried many bookmark synching utilities and none of them have every really met my expectations and I just ended up ditching them and after awhile, stopped searching for new ones. If you search extensions for Firefox, you’ll know there’s bee a bunch out like:
So lets talk about the good stuff first. It not only lets you sychronize your bookmarks, but also lets you choose if you want to synchronize your passwords, your history, your cookies, and your tabs/windows. Next to each syncable item, you have the option to encrypt it. Honestly, I don’t know who would synch their passwords with Google, even if they do encrypt it. It’s like giving Google all the keys to your online identity (even if they claim to be not ‘evil’). I’m only synching my bookmarks at the moment and have enabled encryption and the sychronization occurs seamlessly.
Installation was pretty easy. Clicked on the extension, and it installed. After restarting Firefox, it prompted me to log into my Google account and then set a PIN for encryption. However, the initial setup may take some time if your two browsers have many discrepancies between them, especially if 2 bookmarks have the same URL, but different names/description. I had a bunch of duplicates initially, but after spending 15 minutes or so cleaning up and synching, my bookmarks were the way I want. They also don’t save the site icon which when synching left me with a row of iconless toolbar with now names.
Okay, now on to the bad stuff. First and formost is the fact my data is stored on Google servers. Even though Google may claim to be ‘not evil’ and lets assume they won’t abuse my data, someone might still be able to hack there servers. Since I’m only synching my bookmarks, I’m not too worried since I don’t have any incriminating bookmarks. You should also make sure you didn’t set a bookmark that included your username/password (i.e. http://username:password@www.site.com). The previous synching tools I’ve used before allowed me to setup a ftp server which it’ll upload and download my bookmarks to and from. This however only occurred when I opened my browser and when I closed my browser and lets just say often times my ordering of my bookmarks got messed up. Though I guess Google wants to collect data, and by allowing us to use private servers, they won’t be able to collect the data they want.
Next thing which is really annoying is if you’re using 2 different machines simulataneously with Firefox on, ONLY one of the browsers can be connected to Google’s server. The other one would prompt a error box saying I’ve been signed on somewhere else and would I like to reconnect. By clicking reconnect, my other session gets signed off. I personally think this defeats the purpose of having the browser sync, though I guess it makes Google’s programmers’ lives easier.
The next few issues revolve around the PIN. One thing right off the bat is that Google allows anyone that has access to your profile to see your PIN, just by opening a browser with your profile, going into the tool’s setting, and clicking on the Show button in the Security PIN area. Also, from the FAQ:
Why do I need to provide a PIN?
The PIN you create during setup is used to encrypt information that’s synced between your computers, which may include sensitive information such as your passwords for websites. We use your PIN to unlock that information. Without your PIN, no one will be able to read the information that’s being transmitted between your computers via Google Browser Sync.
What’s the point of encrypting my information?
By encrypting your information, it will be transmitted to and stored on Google’s servers in a format that is nearly impossible to interpret without the PIN. That means that without the PIN, no one, not even Google, will be able to read your data. Therefore, it’s important to choose a good PIN (at least 8 characters including both numbers and letters) that’s hard to guess and to keep your PIN safe. Note that encrypting all of your browser settings may affect the performance of Google Browser Sync and Firefox.
I hope that just means they use my PIN to decrypt my data locally and they don’t store my PIN on their server.
