What is Google Sync "Internet"??

[Destination Moon]

Hi, In: Settings/Accounts and Sync/Google Acct/ there are a number of sync option boxes. One of them is "Sync Internet" . It always fails. My android tablet (running Ginger B) does not have this option so I cant tell if it works for anyone.

Can anyone tell me what this is and if I there is something I can try to make it work?

Thanks!

 

[nelonez]

i think it syncs your favorites and search history from the web.... mainly if using Chrome as your browser on your laptop or desktop....

 

[OWybPPgO]

i think it syncs your favorites and search history from the web.... mainly if using Chrome as your browser on your laptop or desktop....

I have sync internet off and Chrome is syncing - that's controlled by the Chrome settings.

I would also like to know what Sync Internet does.

 

[Tarototh]

Me too!

====optional background======

I just went thru a couple days of sync hell with google and my new phone and my newly re installed copy of chrome on my win8 machine. Turns out the problem was back when I used chrome a couple years ago, I was NOT using sync for my phone at the time; i was too new to android and just didn't know to set all that up. For a few reasons, i ended up uninstalling Chrome; used another browser for the past year+. During this time, i eventually learned how to sync that phone so my contacts, calendar and everything synced between PC and phone, but I never did reinstall chrome (the old phone was not a good web browser so I didnt need all my bookmarks).

Now that I got a brand new awesome phone and I know much much more about android and syncing, I wanted to sync up my web bookmarks on the phone and PC, so i reinstalled Chrome on PC the other day. Instant RED ALERT on syncing. "Please update passphrase."

The hell was in figuring out the "passphrase" is indeed different from "password" in Google (unbelievably hard to get a straight answer on that difference by the way). But in my case they really did want my old passWORD not PHRASE. This confusion led to much hair pulling.

Also my old way of typing my email address was to capitalize the first letter, which matters no where else in modern webmail, but google still does track that difference..

So after figuring out that all it wanted was my passWORD from my capitalized email address, everything worked! It even gave me the option to "merge" my two "different" login accounts (they were identical email addresses except for that capital letter). So FINALLY after that merging, my syncing worked between the phone and computer and my chrome. You see, before I "merged" the accounts:
PHONE showed the OLD bookmarks i used on my OLD install of chrome (using the capitalized email address).
PC was showing my new current bookmarks. Yeah, trippy

My OLD bookmarks for sites i remember visiting 1+yr ago on PC were the ones my phone showed because the bookmarks in googles servers basically froze in time back when I uninstalled Chrome over a year ago. The passphrase is nornally an extra layer of password to keep your multiple machines synced up. Most people leave that feature off, which means your normal google email login works to syncs every machine you have. (in my case google really just wanted my passWORD from my capitalized email, not my passPHRASE). Its a good thing i remembered that password finally.

======End background=========


So now that i look in my phone, rebooted it, all my sync settings which were all in RED status (fail) are now green/OK (except for 1), and YAAAYYYY i have my current PC bookmarks showing up in the phone!! Very happy.....

EXCEPT i now see this "SYNC INTERNET" is the one item in this checklist that is RED/FAIL ... DOH!! Only problem is I can't say for sure if that was GREEN/OK before all my recent troubles; I never really paid attention. For all I know, it has been red since i bought the new phone a week ago....

I have been following many threads on this sync issue, I present all my recent experience in hopes that something I did was similar to something one of you did and maybe this can let us glean a little more what the problem is here....

 

[GSDer]

Bah, who knows what Sync Internets does - all I can tell you is that it's got a green checkmark and a current date/time. But since I don't even have any bookmarks or anything worthwhile in the stock browser, and don't use Chrome, who knows what it thinks it's syncing.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk 2

 

[gozirra]

Changelog: New sync function "Internet"

• "Synchronizes SMS, Email, and Contact info with www.nsa.gov/dropbox/{client-imei}"

 

[Vudumedic]

Prior to Chrome being available it was a way to get bookmarks and passwords from Chrome on desktop/laptop computers since chrome for android has been available the sync has not worked so 1 suspect that it is a bit of code that is hanging on that has no real use.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[sixty_four]

From what I've been able to tell, "Sync Internet" syncs your bookmarks from Chrome running on your desktop(s) with your mobile browser. I don't use mobile Chrome but I can verify that all my desktop Chrome bookmarks sync nearly instantaneously with the stock browser on my Verizon S3 running 4.1.2 as well as the stock browser on my Nexus 7 (1st gen) running 4.3***. I've created a separate folder for mobile versions of my frequently-visited sites and it's nice to have those bookmarks sync'ed to my phone and tablet. I don't know what else is sync'ed with "Sync Internet" but as long as my bookmarks sync, I'm a happy camper.

I've had "Sync Internet" fail on me in the past and after a lot of hair-pulling and online searches, the following procedure has worked like a charm for me the several times this has happened. YMMV, but it's worth a shot:

On phone:
- disable Internet sync
- clear "Internet" app data
- clear "Google Bookmark Sync" data

On Chrome running on desktop:
- "Stop sync and delete data from Google" in Google dashboard
- sign out of Chrome
- revoke app access Google Application Specific page

(optional) maintain, clean-up bookmarks

On web:
- sign into Chrome
- select "Sync Everthing"
- select "Encrypt Password" only

Hopefully, following these steps will result in a successful sync for you.


*** Duh. Edited to add that the stock browser on my Nexus 7 is mobile Chrome.

 

[Tarototh]

I re-edited my gmail settings using the phone (not PC) and restarted and now sync internet is green flag again.... big relief. Only thing is i am not sure which part of what i did worked.

side note, i have had some password/passphrase syncing issues recently due to:

-I used chrome on PC in past. Back then I was registered using CAPS on some of the letters of my login (dumb of me, i know)
-I quit using chrome for a year, til a few weeks ago when i got my new phone.
-Then i made a new login using all lower case but otherwise identical login.
-I had serious passphrase syncing issues and all my syncs failed til i tinkered with it and "merged" the "two separate" accounts - google gave me this option. It was freaky cuz the only difference was the caps and non caps spelling.
-My newer, lower case login failed to sync, but when i merged and changed it to my ORIGINAL caps spelling, now the syncing works. Also, my little avatar in the upper corner now shows the original caps spelling (it was all lower case when i first activated my phone)


So if anyone out there had ever used different caps in a previous sign up, and you have trouble now, try to match up the original caps. It is unheard of nowadays but in past, email addresses did have some case sensitivity (although never enforced nowadays)

I wonder if some forgotten code still looks for it.

However it is just as likely that caps is irrelevant and just by rebooting my phone the internet sync worked... unfortunately i didn't isolated each step well enough to know.....