And I don't understand how so many people in the HN community can believe such conspiracy theories about Google and Chrome, what info they collect and how it's

And I don't understand how so many people in the HN community can believe such conspiracy theories about Google and Chrome, what info they collect and how it's used and shared. AFAICT Google doesn't share any info with 3rd parties unless you sign up with some 3rd party and ask them to share the info. I've never used my Google account to sign up with any 3rd parties. As for Chrome collecting my history.(a) I want that since I want to be able to search my history across devices. For those rare cases where I don't I use an Incognito window. (b) you can opt out of having Google use your history for ad targeting. https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated Note that ad targeting does not in any way suggest Google is sharing data. In fact it's in their best interest not to share data. If they share the data then other companies can use that data themselves. If they don't share data then other companies have to go through Google for targeted ads.