Microsoft Claims Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is going on the offensive against Google, accusing the search giant of creating a browser that does not respect user privacy. The company posted a video, embedded below, on TechNet Edge with the following description: 'Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing.' Microsoft's first criticism is Chrome's combining the address bar and the search box into a single entry box; IE8 keeps those fields separate. 'By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else,' says IE product manager Pete LePage."

Comments

Re:Bogus argument

[nmb3000]

Umm, the boxes are all controlled by the same program, so whether or not there is physical separation between them (does that have any meaning in a user interface?) has nothing to do with whether or not the data is collected or not.

And you don't understand the problem. This isn't a trust issue with the Chrome application. If it was, you would have lost the battle as soon as you installed it on your computer. This is a privacy problem (a recurring theme with Google's applications).

The issue that MS is pointing out is that because Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, when you start typing hotmidgetoatmealpor, that information is sent directly to Google so they can do auto-completion/auto-searching. Where it is associated with you. And saved. Forever.

In IE, the search box is a separate entity, and you can turn search suggestions on or off for each search provider. Because of this, the only information sent to MS (or whatever search provider you use) is what you type in the search box. You can visit whatever URLs you want to and Bing/Yahoo/Google will never know about them.

Honestly though, I still struggle to figure out what the point of search suggestions are. I suppose they're helpful for people who don't know what they're looking for, but when I go to Google, I already know what I'm going to search for -- that's why I'm there! That said, I suppose it does provide some entertainment.

Re:Not Correct

[Enderandrew]

Chrome actually has a bunch of fine-grain privacy controls they added in the last release.

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/more/privacy.html

Re:Bogus argument

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue that MS is pointing out is that because Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, when you start typing hotmidgetoatmealpor, that information is sent directly to Google so they can do auto-completion/auto-searching. Where it is associated with you. And saved. Forever.

From Google's Privacy Blog (in 2008):

That's what occurs on the surface of Google Suggest. Here's what happens under the hood. To provide its recommendations Google Suggest needs to know what you've already typed, so these partial queries are sent to Google. For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.

However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use. This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month.