Typing anything into the Google Chrome browser's "Omnibox" gave Google rights to those words forever and ever. At least that's how CNET characterized a section of the End User License Agreement that Google recently updated for the software.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern about the gee-whiz Omnibox and its digestive habits:
"We're worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google's data vaults," (EFF staff technologist Peter) Eckersley said. "Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment.
I know it's an old quote, but former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy's infamous line that people have no privacy and should get over it has relevance here. With Google dominating the search engine market, people already give Google, willingly, reams and reams of information through millions of queries day after day.
The easiest way to avoid concerns about privacy and the Chrome browser is to use something else. Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even Internet Explorer exist as mainstream options, all of which people were using before Google's attention-getting Chrome launch.
Wouldn't it be amazing if people found themselves trusting Microsoft and Internet Explorer more than Google these days?
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Welcome back David! Pretty bold of Google to do this. All the marketing data it will be able to capture....
Walt Mossberg reports in the Wall Street Journal that "Chrome and IE8 are far more advanced than Apple's Safari. Safari is speedy on both Mac and Windows platforms, but lacks many of the key intelligent features of its newer Google and Microsoft rivals." It's the intelligence that concerns me. But hey, nothing is really free is it?
A Mac OS X version of Chrome is still months away :( My guess is that will be out in time for MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, early January 2009.
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