Court filings show that well before the search engine giant was taken to court, rank and file Googlers frankly voiced their own frustrations that Incognito didn’t live up to its name.

“We need to stop calling it Incognito and stop using a Spy Guy icon,” one engineer said in a 2018 chat among Google Chrome engineers, after sharing research that showed users misunderstood features of private browsing modes. He was referring to the image of sunglasses under a hat that pop ups with a message, “You’ve gone Incognito,” when a user opens a new tab to browse privately.

A colleague responded by posting a link to a wiki profile of a character on “The Simpsons” cartoon show called Guy Incognito, who is a doppelganger of protagonist Homer Simpson. “Regardless of the name, the Incognito icon should have always been” Guy Incognito, the employee said. “Which also accurately conveys the level of privacy it provides.”

Twohill’s memo and a transcript of the employee chat are part of a larger collection of emails, presentations and employee testimony, all buried in court records, that offers a window into the controversy within Google around Incognito.

Read more:

Nayak, M. (2022, October 11). Google’s ‘Incognito’ Mode Inspires Staff Jokes — and a Big Lawsuit. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-11/google-s-incognito-inspires-staff-jokes-and-a-big-lawsuit