I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about my digital life – identify theft, account hacks, stolen passwords…  it’s not something I think about.  Google’s modifications to their systems haven’t really changed that, but I did notice that logging out doesn’t work they way it used to, and I’m a bit annoyed.

This is where you sign out now – you click your name or your icon and it generates a popup with a sign out button on the bottom right.  So no more simple ‘sign out’ text.  A bit inconvenient, but that’s fine with me as I always clear everything from my browser every time I close it, which should end all sessions on all sites… except that doesn’t sign you out anymore.

Now when I say I clear everything, I mean I clear everything from my browser when I shut it – browsing history, download history, form & search history, cookies, active logins, cache, offline website data…  everything.  I’m not sure why anymore as I’ve been doing it for so many years I can’t remember why I started, but it’s just how I roll now – and this used to be good enough to log me out of all sites, but it doesn’t work with Gmail anymore.  This begs the question:  how on earth are they storing my session?  I cleared all of my browser history, closed the tab, closed the program…  yet I am still signed in.  I get that I didn’t actually click ‘sign out,’ but if I cleared all of my browser data, that really ought to have taken care of it, right?  Not so much – not anymore.

So now, I have to take the extra few seconds to actually click my name and click ‘sign out’ before i clear by browser history, and frankly, it’s not a big deal, but:

1.  I don’t want to do that
2.  From a technical standpoint, I have no idea why that is the case

Just a minor complaint, but hey, that’s how I roll.  I still love Gmail and YouTube, but I have to admit, I don’t love this change.