Unable to reproduce the issue on mac 10.11.5 chrome version 51.0.2704.106 and canary - Signin with same account and changing any settings (On Startup) in one browser doesnt reflect on other browser.

Could you please upgrade to latest stable and with a new profile see if issue still exists.

I've upgraded and still see this problem.  I've seen this for over a year now, so this is not a new regression.

Thank you for providing more feedback. Adding requester "tkonchada@chromium.org" for another review and adding "Needs-Review" label for tracking.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

I'm having trouble following the initial description. By 'starting tabs', do you mean the Settings -> On startup radio button choice? What value are you setting them to? Or am I completely misunderstanding what you're talking about?

On Startup -> Open a specific page or set of pages.

The pages I choose are synced across installations of Chrome even though I have 'sync open tabs' off.

So we're currently treating this value as a setting. If you go into Advanced sync settings -> uncheck 'Settings', your starting tabs will no longer sync between your browsers.

I'm really unsure if this should be resolved as working as intended, or if it makes sense to disable syncing this setting if the user stops syncing 'Open tabs'. I think you could make the argument that 'open tabs' are not 'startup tabs'.

Help me understand your use case here. Why did you disable the 'Open tabs' data type for sync? Did you disable syncing any other data types? What are you using these multiple browsers for?

Use case is very simple.  At work, I've got pages I want to see on Startup that aren't available outside of work.

Likewise, there are pages I like to see at home that I don't want to see at work.

This can't be that uncommon, can it?

I'm marking this as working as intended for now.

@cplager: you can disable Settings sync (by going to chrome://settings/syncSetup and unchecking the "Settings" checkbox), if you don't want your Chrome settings (such as the tabs that get opened on startup) to sync across devices.

The "open tabs" datatype controls whether the list of currently opened tabs syncs across your devices, and doesn't actually relate directly to the setting of which tabs get opened at startup.