Because I've never used it and yet I'm hounded to "give it a try" on what seems like a weekly basis.

OK, yeah I see how that would be annoying.

It's kind of an extension of the annoyance from not using G+ and yet having it crammed down my throat; it's the same tactic just with a little less gusto.

I actually did try it out when they first introduced it, but when I installed Chrome on a different machine and tried to get my settings there, the sync server got totally confused and re-enabled all sorts of settings that I'd disabled (like syncing my entire history and removing my cookie-blocking exceptions.)

Agreed, this was a long time back, so I actually decided to give it another try today, but now it seems to have a problem with 2FA... I gave it both my master and app-specific password, but it consistently comes back saying the app-specific password is wrong. Has anyone else noticed this problem?

2fa with chrome sync is a PITA. I've found the best way to enable sync is to login to gmail which usually triggers a dialog that asks you whether you want to use those credentials for chrome sync.

Yet another example how horrible this "ecosystem" craze everyone seems to be enamored by these days quickly becomes. Why the fuck do I need to sign up with Gmail to use something in chrome? (How would it even work? I moved from google apps to fastmail, so my MX records are all different now.)

It's the same with most RSS readers nowadays... every single app I've tried assumes I have a Google Reader account, and flat out refuses to work without it. Same with Google Talk. All these apps implement rss/xmpp backends anyway, why do they hardcode google into it?

Sorry for the rant, it's just frustrating how (needlessly) difficult it is once you go outside the sanctioned path. Death by a thousand cuts.

Privacy is one reason, but not a very good one. For the "Open Tabs" sync, privacy is a very good reason.

You can set it to encrypt everything, including open tabs. Since it's encrypted locally, the sync server can't see anything.