Google: Unchrome Chrome’s Tracking Functions

September 20, 2008

Silicon.com has a useful article “Google Browser’s Tracking Feature Alarms Developers, Privacy Advocates” about Google Chrome. The writer Elise Ackerman references the browser’s “phoning home” feature. But the most important item in the write up is the unearthing of a piece of software that can be used, she asserts, to blunt some of Google’s usage tracking functions. She writes:

I firmly believe that it is better to have control over your own privacy without having to trust that Google doesn’t do anything bad with your data,” said Sven Abels, president of Abelssoft, a software company in Delmenhorst, Germany, that is offering free downloads of its UnChrome software.

This download link worked for me at 5 18 am Utrecht on September 20, 2008. I have not tested this script, so use it at your own risk. More information about Google’s tracking, ad injection technology, and usage data models appear in various Google technical papers and documents available from the USPTO. I included a description of some of the Google methods in my 2005 study The Google Legacy, which is still available from the publisher here. Usage tracking is a bit of old news given new life because of Google’s Chrome release. Chrome, as I noted in my speech on Thursday afternoon at the Hartmann Conference, is perceived as a browser. In my opinion it is an umbilical that connects any computing device to the Google data centers. The computing device and its operating system are little more than booster rockets that get the user into Google orbit.

Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Cloud computing, Google, News, Online (general), Technology

Comments

2 Responses to “Google: Unchrome Chrome’s Tracking Functions”

patrick on September 20th, 2008 6:17 pm

it’s funny, the more i use Chrome (for windows), the more unstable it seems to get… crashes a lot more, can’t handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab… all that to say, i’m switching back to Firefox
Stephen E. Arnold on September 22nd, 2008 6:20 pm

Patrick,

It’s early days for Chrome. None of these “browsers” is flawless. Opera routinely self destructs on my Treo 650.

Stephen Arnold, September 22, 2008

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.