Google Chrome and privacy

Tue, Sep 2, 2008 02:39 PM
So, Google Chrome is out. If you don't know, it's Google's new browser. I downloaded it on my Windows XP machine and tried it out. I found this curious thing in the options.

Google Chrome Spying on you?

So, I thought, I will click "Learn more" to see what they are watching. I get this.

Uh OH! 404!

So, I unchecked the box. Let's hope the premature launch is the reason there is no more information out there.

UPDATE: The page comes up now and says:
Information that's sent to Google includes crash reports and statistics on how often you use Google Chrome features. When you choose to accept a suggested query or URL in the address bar, the text you typed and the corresponding suggestion is sent to Google. Google Chrome doesn't send other personal information, such as name, email address, or Google Account information.

So, if you use their suggestions, they know it.  And it tracks what features you use.  Hmm, I think I will disable.
7 comments
Gravatar for media kingdom

media kingdom Says:

should be interesting to see if Chrome works more efficiently than FireFox... if it's faster than Firefox, since isn't IE, then i'll use it

Gravatar for Brian Moon

Brian Moon Says:

It is quite fast. But, the interface is a little clumsy. I think there is still some stuff to work out.

Gravatar for Stepan Mazurov

Stepan Mazurov Says:

There is a legitimate other reason to track your google suggest usage, the only way around is to...not use google at all (including their analytics codes on virtually every website)

Gravatar for Brian Moon

Brian Moon Says:

Yes, it scares me how much knowledge they have about internet usage through analytics and adsense.

Gravatar for Gareth

Gareth Says:

Even if you disable that option, google chrome still makes a request to http://clients1.google..../complete/search?... for every keystroke in the address box.

You have to disable that with the [Default Search] | [Manage] | [Use suggestion service...] option

Other requests are made when you leave on the [Under the Hood] | [Show suggestions for navigation errors] and [Enable phishing and Malware protection] options.

Gravatar for Artem

Artem Says:

A little off topic...

I'm a little pissed about this release by google. They're definitely not going to take over the browser market with IE having 70% of users and FF holding to the techy crowd with the huge amount of extensions.

I feel like their time would be better spent devoting more resources to upgrading their various existing products like Gmail and such. Their suite of products could be so much more useful if they upgrade the UI and empower users with more features.

If they really wanted a hand in the browser market, they could have at least supported Mozilla in some way so we could get more users away from IE.

So now developers have to worry about yet another browser for compatibility. Sure, it's based on Safari's Webkit rendering engine but as they add more features to the browser they will start to branch out into their own unique bugs.

/rant

Gravatar for Google’s Ambitions are Out of this World | T

Google’s Ambitions are Out of this World | T Says:

[...] reading your license plate from space.  And to think, some people are still worried about Google tracking their online behavior! addthis_url = [...]

Comments are disabled for this post.