Google Chrome

[Buffy]

So, who's gonna be the first to try Chrome?

Put your reviews here!

Me? I *always* wait for version 2....

It was very early, and we were still like beta or alpha stage, and so we started receiving a ton of download. The server became overloaded, and that's when I realized that this had a huge market,
Buffy

[alexander]

I cant wait to get Google to collect more information about me.... yaaay

is it just me or it came out for win xp and vista only?

dont get me wrong, i love google, but i like my firefox the way it is

[Buffy]

Yah its sounding pretty ugly. Here's what you agree Google has the right to do if you install it (h/t Microsoft Watch):

Originally Posted by From eWeek/Microsoft Watch, Joe Wilcox, 9/3/2008

When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for...Your copy of Google Chrome includes one or more unique application numbers. These numbers and information about your installation of the browser (e.g., version number, language) will be sent to Google when you first install and use it and when Google Chrome automatically checks for updates. If you choose to send usage statistics and crash reports to Google, the browser will send us this information along with a unique application number as well.

As the author says, "can you say Keylogger"?

I think Google is well on their way to being The Next Evil Empire. We passed on their Ajax library because they lockup the translator between the Java you have to write and the javascript it generates.

Don't be fooled but....

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,
Buffy

[alexander]

Lol Windows does all that and a lot more anyways... so what are you worried about with google, at least they don't share the info with the gov-t, unlike the mentioned above company...?

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by alexander

Lol Windows does all that and a lot more anyways...

Keylogger? Hmmm?

Originally Posted by alexander

so what are you worried about with google, at least they don't share the info with the gov-t, unlike the mentioned above company...?

Are you................suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure?

Actually, its not that I *trust* Microsoft, its that I think they're too *stupid* to do much that's nefarious! Unlike our friends at Google who are the "smartest guys in the room...."

I don't really trust a sane person,
Buffy

[alexander]

Keylogger? Hmmm?

upon your connection to the update server, every website you have gone to, every movie you have watched, every song in your play list hits M$ servers.

Buffy, collaboration to stay in business in China is not the same as disclosing information. While google will say "search term restricted", it will not send an email to the gov-t saying "Hey, this ip address at this location was just googling for this term...

I will stay with goodle until the day they disclose private information (and i consider much of the information as private) to a private or gov-t entity...

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by alexander

upon your connection to the update server, every website you have gone to, every movie you have watched, every song in your play list hits M$ servers.

I've never heard of that. Is it in the EULA?
Where's this info locally stored?

[alexander]

I doubt that's in the EULA, this was discovered by actually looking at the transmitted data at the time of the sync. M$ may have encoded it better, but i am sure they still are transmitting gathered user spy data...

[Buffy]

Well, they're trying:

Originally Posted by Google Promises Privacy Fixes in Its Chrome Browser, Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 9/8/2008

Google, whose new, faster Web browser Chrome has raised privacy concerns on both sides of the Atlantic, said yesterday it was taking steps to mask the identities of people who use the tool.
...
Jane Horvath, Google's senior privacy counsel, said that the company would be anonymizing the Internet Protocol address and the cookies that track users when they type search terms or Web pages into Chrome's Omnibox, an all-in-one search and address bar.
...
"My main concern is the ability to collect users' Web addresses, and therefore your complete surfing on the Web could be tracked," Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar, said of Chrome. "The Web is, in fact, a second life. A virtual mirror of one's real life, with information about one's interests, activities, perhaps sexual orientation."
...
Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said, "If all they're doing is removing a portion of the IP address, I don't think it really renders all of their logs anonymous. If you're truly anonymizing it so there is no IP address, no cookie, and no identifying information in the log itself, then there's significantly less privacy concern."

I still say that Microsoft is to stupid and inept to do anything with the garbage they're hoovering. I get scared about Google because I know how smart they are and how the best intentions can go awry....

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman,
Buffy

[pgrmdave]

What worries me about google is that so far, they seem to be rather benign, but they have massive amounts of data, massive computing power, and the trust of the people, which means that it may only take a few changes in the leadership and suddenly the Big Friendly Giant isn't so friendly anymore...