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New Chrome Beta Adds Privacy Controls, Translation Option

Posted by Soulskill on from the on-the-campaign-trail dept.

billandad writes "Anyone would think the timing was deliberate; just as Microsoft is forced into giving users the option to switch from IE via the browser ballot screen, so Google introduces a new Chrome beta with enhanced privacy features to chisel away at Microsoft's market share. '... you can control how browser cookies, images, JavaScript, plug-ins, and pop-ups are handled on a site-by-site basis. For example, you can set up cookie rules to allow cookies specifically only for sites that you trust, and block cookies from untrusted sites.' The new beta also adds language detection, and will prompt the user to translate a page if it's written in a foreign tongue."

10 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. A bright future for the web... by levell · · Score: 4, Informative

    And Opera 10.50 has just been released too, the first version of Opera with <Video> tag support.

    With Chrome, Safari and Firefox all evolving quickly, the future of the web is looking good. I just wish they would all support an open, royalty-free codec.

    --
    Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
    1. Re:A bright future for the web... by buruonbrails · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yep, the future of the web is looking good, except for IE that is lagging behind. I wonder, why MS wouldn't just get over it and discontinue the development of its monstrous browser. They've lost the browser war, why wouldn't they put their resources elsewhere?
      At least IE8 is better than its predecessors and IE9 looks even better, but still..

    2. Re:A bright future for the web... by jaymz666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Netscape also had the largest userbase when they lost.

    3. Re:A bright future for the web... by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      while IE doesn't generate direct revenue. The main reason why they are spending resources on IE is to promote Bing and a number of other products.

      So, just like Firefox, Chrome and Opera then?

      It doesn't really matter if browsers don't generate direct revenue. Indirect revenue is still revenue just as well. Mozilla cashes in $78.6 million (2008) a year, and they don't even have the marketshare of IE and that was in 2008.

    4. Re:A bright future for the web... by Inner_Child · · Score: 4, Informative

      Too bad Opera won't be part of that since literally no one uses it.

      You don't know what 'literally' means, do you?

      --
      Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
  2. Re:Google? Privacy? by TSHTF · · Score: 4, Informative

    You don't have to "trust" their browser at all.

    The source code for Chrome is freely available. If you find any features that are unfriendly towards privacy, you're free to modify the source.

  3. Re:Google? Privacy? by nellim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Okay - chromium can be made safe, but not Chrome. Chrome + Vbox machine + Wireshark = Proof of concept. Chrome talks to google servers no matter what settings you put them on. Good luck with privacy.

  4. Re:Google? Privacy? by sopssa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's the usual trick. The privacy settings conveniently ignore any such issue and only concentrate on the client side things like "private tab" or cookie handling. Of course, if you don't want to go completely white-list based (and most users don't), there's no way to explicitly block certain domains like google-analytics.com.

    Of course it's convenient for Google to call only that privacy and completely ignore the fact that every Chrome installation has identifier about where you downloaded it, when you installed it, an unique identifier, everything you type to browser bar is sent to Google, any domain you visit is sent to Google, and so on...

  5. Hidden in plain sight by westlake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You don't have to "trust" their browser at all. The source code for Chrome is freely available. If you find any features that are unfriendly towards privacy, you're free to modify the source.

    If - and only if - you can read and understand the source.

    If - and only if - you have the programming skills - and the time - to produce a well-behaved modification.

    I am tempted to argue that when a program reaches a certain size or complexity the difference between closed and open source becomes academic.

  6. Re:Google? Privacy? by Goaway · · Score: 4, Informative

    Good choice. Iron is a very questionable project, and the developer has admitted that he's just spreading FUD about Google to drive traffic to his site to make money off ads.

    Also, http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.html