Google admits that Google Chrome tracks web addresses

[SEO]

Look Out... Big brother is getting more and more brazen.

According to Stuart Turton - PC Pro News;

Google has admitted the auto-suggest feature of Chrome's Omnibox gives it potential access to users' keystrokes, providing the company with a wealth of information on the browsing habits of its users.

Apparently Google says it intends to store about 2% of this information, alongside the IP address of the computer that typed it.

Here is the original wording of the EULA that accompanied Google's chrome browser:

"By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services,"

However, the company has now drastically amended this to read: "You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."

As far as computing is concerned, and companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. what you do in the privacy of your own home is no longer private but belongs to them.

Oh well... at least the licence was to be 'non-exclusive' to Google... Which means that we would be able to use our browsing information as well...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/222834/g...addresses.html

[erikko]

what the..... and it's supposed to be open source doesn't mean it's all out

[grishamist]

I don't want to argue about it. That's why it's a beta, we can encounter problems and bugs because it's a pre-test. And I know Google will fix the problems regarding on that issue.

[wige]

Just to make one point, as I have developed an auto suggest feature in the past, identical (or nearly identical) to the service that Chrome communicates with.

This auto suggest feature is identical to the functionality of the search box in Mozilla Firefox and is under consideration for use in Internet Explorer, except in Chrome it uses the address bar instead of a seperate search pane. If you set a different search engine from Google, this information is sent to that other search engine, who I am sure will track the information as well. This transmission of data can also be disabled in Chrome. It can not be disabled in Firefox.