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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."
I'm not real sure if taking up 900+MB of RAM and 1+GB of VM can really be considered "trivial". I was playing Crysis once and alt-tabbed out of it to figure out why everything was so choppy, and Firefox was using more resources than Crysis.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
As somebody who personally knows people working on Chrome, I can assure you that data mining was not the goal of Chrome. Most engineers at Google are sincerely trying to make the Web a better place. That this actually helps Google is just a bonus for them.
do you not think that Firefox is becoming the new IE? If I can remember correctly through my drunken history of the last 8 years, Firefox was first promoted as an alternative the bloated Mozilla - and quite rightly so. Recently though, despite all the releases and the announcements on brand new 10x-faster JavaScript interpreters I find it's bogging down to an almost unusable level. .mozilla/firefox/{UID}.profile directory. Now...try running 'strings' on your places.sqlite file and try running strings on the files in the bookmarkbackups directory. Yeh, privacy, HUH?
Once upon a time there used to be configuration to permit or deny javascript to run - now this is split into 12 different parameters, 7 of which are hidden behind the about:config screen. The default is now for pages to be able to open windows hiding the menu and status bar. WTF?
Once upon a time there used to an option to open new pages as a tab or in a new window - now this is split into 2 different parameters (browser.link.open_newwindow and browser.link.open_newwindow_restriction) which make no sense to anybody.
Do you expect 'backspace' to go 'backwards' in your browsing history? Everybody does - on all browsers, except for the Linux release of Firefox - for no understandable reason they decided that the Linux Firefox should do nothing upon pressing backspace, but all other versions should continue the convention.
Do you actively use the overly complicated features of the re-written Bookmarks functionality on Firefox 3.x? I don't, nobody in my office (20 people) does. Everybody hate it.
And lastly... privacy. Firefox 3.x made a real big push for 'privacy'. They said 'you can toggle private browsing on and off' - and 'you can delete browsing history over the last hour, day, month etc..". SUPER LIE. Try deleting your history (everything!) then go to your