>Employees reportedly cracked jokes about the feature’s inept, and potentially misleading privacy protections in recent years, with one marketing officer reportedly directly emailing CEO Sundar Pichai, basically begging him to make the product actually live up to its name according to recent court documents viewed by Bloomberg. Those jokes and internal criticism comes amid multiple lawsuits questioning Google transparency around the feature. > >In one email sent to Pichai, Google marketing chief Lorraine Twohill reportedly warned that the current customer confusion around Incognito mode was forcing the company to dance around using fuzzy and hedging language that ultimately risked degrading consumer trust. > >“Make Incognito Mode truly private,” she wrote in the email. It’s worth noting that Twohill sent that email after multiple users filed a multi-billion dollar class action privacy lawsuit against Google for allegedly tracking users while using Incognito. Those users claim that supposedly surreptitious tracking amounts to privacy violations. The judge presiding over the lawsuit last week refused to let plaintiffs question Pichai in pre-trial proceedings despite the CEO’s connections in Google Chrome’s development and subsequent concerned emails regarding Incognito. > >Let’s back up for a second. For some clarity, Google Chrome’s so-called Incognito browsing hides your search history from other people using your device but doesn’t actually prevent Google or its advertiser friends from logging and profiting off your search history. Critics of Incognito, like the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit, and more recently Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argue Google’s branding and messaging around Incognito makes it appear much more privacy preserving than it actually is. Paxton, in particular, alleges the company’s ​​representations about Incognito mode are “false, deceptive, and misleading.” > >... > >“We need to stop calling it Incognito and stop using a Spy Guy icon,” one engineer said in a 2018 chat. The engineer reportedly cited publicly available research showing users didn’t really understand how the feature worked. Another employee flippantly responded by posting a wiki to the page for “Guy Incognito” from The Simpsons, who, other than a small mustache, looks identical to Homer Simpson. That low effort disguise, according to the employee, “accurately conveys the level of privacy it [Incognito] provides.”

One thing that tech companies like Google seem to get wrong all the time is the bombastic language they use in their branding and marketing attempts. The challenge here is that the public will take these terms at face value, not understand the fine print, and then suffer the consequences of something that is notably different than what was promised. In addition to 'Incognito Mode' here, another recent offender would be Tesla's 'Autopilot' and 'Full Self Driving'.