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I've worked on Chrome since the beginning (I'm a founding team member) and I designed and built the omnibox and wrote most of this code. I'm confident we haven

I've worked on Chrome since the beginning (I'm a founding team member) and I designed and built the omnibox and wrote most of this code. I'm confident we haven't ever done what you're describing. We haven't always been perfect. When we first launched, for example, we didn't exclude some cases from suggest querying that we should have, and that was my oversight. I can't remember the specifics (things like https:// https:// URLs or input while in incognito mode, IIRC) but I landed a patch a couple days after the 2008 launch to clean it up. The Chrome team as a whole is very privacy focused. There's a lot of people in public (including in this article's comments) who think Chrome is some sort of Google data collection device, but having seen things from the inside, I would trust Chrome with my data over any other browser. It makes reasonable tradeoffs by default (e.g. not enabling features like sync or server-side spellcheck that tend to send more data), and what stuff is there that people might not want (e.g. omnibox server-side suggestions) can all be easily disabled.

londons_explore 8y ago
I have seen the server-side infrastructure, and can say that the data, if it arrives on a Google server, is typically very carefully handled. Claims like "your browser history is available to every employee and sold to partner companies" are categorically wrong.
_dark_matter_ 8y ago
I just want to point out that you're making a false equivalency. "I would trust Chrome with my data over any other browser" - you don't _have_ to trust other browsers with your data. You can run them without any data collection at all.
- pkasting 8y ago
  False dichotomy. You provide all browsers with data by using them; the question is what they do with that data. Chrome is not materially different than other browsers in the level of control you're able to have over what gets sent elsewhere. You can very easily set it so the only thing the server sees is a "check if an update is available." If you're using Chromium instead of Chrome, then you don't have the updater, so even that is not present. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Listening_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Listening_capabi... , which is a reasonable summary with more detail than what I've given above. For full details, see https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html .

londons_explore 8y ago

I have seen the server-side infrastructure, and can say that the data, if it arrives on a Google server, is typically very carefully handled. Claims like "your browser history is available to every employee and sold to partner companies" are categorically wrong.

_dark_matter_ 8y ago

I just want to point out that you're making a false equivalency. "I would trust Chrome with my data over any other browser" - you don't _have_ to trust other browsers with your data. You can run them without any data collection at all.

pkasting 8y ago
False dichotomy. You provide all browsers with data by using them; the question is what they do with that data. Chrome is not materially different than other browsers in the level of control you're able to have over what gets sent elsewhere. You can very easily set it so the only thing the server sees is a "check if an update is available." If you're using Chromium instead of Chrome, then you don't have the updater, so even that is not present. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Listening_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Listening_capabi... , which is a reasonable summary with more detail than what I've given above. For full details, see https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html .