Why native browser sync doesn't solve cross-profile workflows

Sync was designed for one person, one account

When browser sync was designed, the problem was a person with a desktop and a laptop. One account, two machines, keep them identical. Everything about the design follows from that: the account is the unit, the data is a mirror, and there is no notion of partial sharing.

Profiles arrived later to solve a different problem — one machine, several identities — and the two features were never joined up. That is why the thing you want (share a little between identities) sits precisely in the gap between them.

The gap, stated plainly

• Native sync is vertical: one account, many devices.
• Profiles are horizontal: one device, many accounts.
• Nothing in either browser moves data horizontally.

Why the browsers will not close it

Cross-account sharing conflicts with the guarantee profiles exist to provide. If Chrome allowed bookmarks to flow between a personal account and a managed work account, every enterprise administrator would have a data-exfiltration problem, and every user would have a new class of mistake available to them. A default-on version of that feature would be irresponsible; a default-off version would still be a support burden the browser vendors have shown no interest in taking on.

An extension is the right layer for it, because the user installs it deliberately, into the specific profiles they choose, with a scope they define.

Symptoms you are hitting the gap

• You email or message links to yourself between profiles.
• The same site is bookmarked in three profiles, at three different URLs.
• You keep one “everything” profile you know you should not use.
• You rebuild the same starter set every time a client hands you a new account.

What closing it looks like

Not merging profiles, and not abandoning native sync. Keep both browsers syncing their own accounts, and add one narrow horizontal channel for the small set of things that belong everywhere. That is exactly the scope of cross-profile syncing, and the honest comparison with Chrome's own sync is here.