back to article Microsoft slings mud at Google Chrome

Microsoft has publicly attacked Google Chrome, accusing its arch web rival of compromising user privacy with the browser's data-gathering address bar. In a video posted to Microsoft's TechNet site and tagged with the title Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy, Internet Explorer product manager Pete LePage uses a web traffic …

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  1. David Gosnell

    SRWare Iron

    I mainly use SRWare Iron, which is basically Chrome without all the dodgy bits. At least with open source we have the means to analyse and remove the nasties properly. Some may feel uneasy accessing their on-line banking through a relatively unknown browser, but I feel a darned sight more confident about my data privacy and security with Iron than I would with IE.

  2. KenBW2

    Privacy v Features

    So Google makes a browser crafted around the method of information discover they understand the most. Don't like it? don't use it.

    Someone should point MS in the direction of Iron

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron

  3. Phillip Webster
    Badgers

    Doesn't in incognito mode

    And there's an option to turn the suggestions off.

    I fail to see the problem here.

    It does seem quite typical of Microsoft to spin "we don't have this feature" into "Google is stealing your privacy!!" though.

    1. BorkedAgain
      Gates Halo

      A propos spin

      It's a little like their adverts for Bing that they're running now. Their search engine is crap at finding results, so they try to make a virtue of this by claiming it's anti "information overload"

      heh. Funny funny. Information underload.

  4. joe 14
    FAIL

    Pot meet kettle

    Wow, coming from them? GTFOH! Really???

    The last time i looked MS and Facebook got together to share my contacts in my hotmail account. I don't use F-book much or really at all. I just use crap info in my profile anyway. Some of my friends sent me an invite so i obliged. What i was completely stunned by was how facebook got a copy of my contacts and was recommending them as people to send invites to.

    So MS you talk about browser privacy, but fail to mention your "Partnership" with a company who is even less interested in privacy than you or Google. I didn't give you permission to give it to them so how do you protect me and my privacy by giving F-book a list of my friends?

    If rigged browsers give Google and i'm sure Bing very soon surf profiling information WTF do you think giving F-book my friends email addresses does????

    Gives them a way bigger profile on who I am than what i do on the internet, MORONS!

    Funny thing is they also fail to mention that their wonderful browser (any version) IS the most targeted app on the 1 billion puters by scumware makers and distributors in history. "We don't collect it but we make it easy for others to"

    MS Go pound salt!!!

    I'm going to go pound a few drinks!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    woah!

    "Microsoft believes your browser is yours..." -- NO THEY DON'T! LOL Or else we could customize it the way WE want, like Firefox, e.g.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Chrome/SWiron and dodgy connections

    I tried both and found that on some sites with https login that the browser also connected via https to Google owned servers at the same time. No other browser I use does that on the same sites.

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    so...

    you can use Chrome and google will know things, or use ie 8 and the world + plus hid dog knows, but to security holes, glad i dont use either!!

  9. mhenriday

    Or how wilt thou say to thy brother,

    Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

    Henri

    1. mhenriday

      For a concrete example of how large - and intrusive - that beam can be,

      check out Microsoft's «Guardian Angel» (http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc6smv3 )....

      Henri

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Move On and Along Now, Nothing to See just Here for IT's Everywhere?

        "For a concrete example of how large - and intrusive - that beam can be, check out Microsoft's «Guardian Angel» (http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc6smv3 ).... Henri" ..... mhenriday Posted Friday 2nd April 2010 12:59 GMT

        And that concrete example, Henri, is but as a pixel in a picture for the Future has Infinity to Play with in Time and Space, and that easily Enables Fabulous Surprises for All, Beyond the Wildest and Craziest of Dreams.

        And the Beauty of the Future Program is ......... IT is All Freely Provided to You for You to be Free in Order Learn of ITs SMARTer Alien Ways ...............

        [quote]"The US works on a "first to invent" concept ...."

        And in the event of mental block and/or "discovery" of much more advanced foreign and/or alien concepts, first to copy and plagiarise, which is, whenever working with the monitoring and second guessing/strategic deep packet inspection and critical code analysis for reverse engineering to Phorm and/or uncover Lode Ores and Core Sources [for it is naive and the common default failing in animal Man to not imagine and conclude that Advanced IntelAIgent Drive has Innumerable Providers of Intellectually Shared Property] of such SMARTer Enabled and Enabling Operative Systems, a most convenient and Perfectly Stealthy Methodology which embeds a Sublime Host Mentor and Virtually Immaculate AIdDriver in Monitoring Systems [SCADA Shells] ....... with Remote Executive Power and Command Access, way beyond the Influence and Direct Control of ITs Slave Pilot Host......... who/which would then be Morphed and Evolved into Willing and Able Paying Passenger, Tracking and Scouting with Search, Futures and Derivatives of such BetaTest Pilot Programs ....... Civil CyberIntelAIgent Space Projects with AI See through ITs NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive Bigger Picture Windows.

        For New World Order Great Game Systems in CHAOS ..... Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems

        http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/03/microsoft_gets_guardian_angel_patent.html [/quote]

  10. Chika
    Coat

    Yeah, riiiiight!

    "Browsing the web is the number one thing Windows customers do when they boot up their PCs..."

    So Solitaire has finally been ousted, then?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Google Analytics

    I work for a solution provider to a UK Government department. As part of analysing traffic that is going from this department out to the GSI, we found that daily we would be sending Gigabytes of traffic out to Google Analytics. GA are in the top 10 of bandwidth usage every day and we are now taking measures to block this traffic from eating part of our bandwidth.

  12. Mage Silver badge

    http://www.browserchoice.eu/BrowserChoice/browserchoice_en.htm

    Less choice than you think!

    you don't want IE8

    you should avoid Chrome

    Safari has been known to install Apple's installer updater that nags for iTunes

    Some of the others are really IE8. One is maybe a rework of Firefox.

    So Opera or Firefox, or if you like Safari, get an Webkit not by apple, say arora http://arora-browser.org

    The browser choice is a strange collection on the 2nd group.

  13. Atli
    FAIL

    All lies!

    ""Browsing the web is the number one thing Windows customers do when they boot up their PCs.""

    I wonder how, exactly, they got that statistic? Surely not by collecting information from their users...

    And it's convenient, how he forgets to mention the reason *why* Chrome sends that info when you type in the Omnibox, or the fact that IE8 was the 3'rd of the major browsers to include a privacy feature like "inPrivate".

    1. dogged
      Black Helicopters

      God forbid

      that a company should ask people what they do with their computers. The horror!

      1. Atli

        @dogged

        Where does it mention anything about asking them for the info? In fact, there is a distinct lack of explanation for the statement. (Thus, my wondering about it.)

        You can't exactly blame us for questioning Microsoft's statements after watching that little piece of fiction...

  14. AndrueC Silver badge

    Gosh

    So Google knows what I search for. Big deal. So they fine tune their advertising? Even less important since I know how to block it. What I get is a very handy search/address bar and those suggestions are actually quite handy. They allow you to refine your search before you've actually executed it.

    OTOH what do I get with IE8? A four of five second wait just because I asked for another tab, outrageous memory consumption and questionable security.

    It's Chrome for me boys. Until IE9 at any rate.

  15. Steve Graham
    Linux

    IE for me?

    Thanks, Microsoft, for getting the news out. I don't think I'll be installing Chrome in the near future.

    Of course, since I hate and despise everything to do with Windows and run only Linux, I won't be installing IE either.

    1. Atli
      Stop

      @Steve

      Before you go writing Chrome off, I suggest you look into *why* it keeps sending the info you type. - The reason may well cause you to want to use Chrome. (A reason, by the way, which this video conveniently fails to mention.)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Flame

        Google is a thief

        "Before you go writing Chrome off, I suggest you look into *why* it keeps sending the info you type."

        No. It doesn't.

        I should have right to shoot anyone just _trying to_ steal my privacy, no matter who is the person/corporation/state.

        Google's CEO has much better perspective of Google's motives than you do and he's a thief by nature, only an total idiot would trust that kind of person _any_ data. About anything.

  16. Lewis Mettler 1
    Stop

    IE is the only browser you are forced to buy

    And the idiots at Microsoft actually think they are respecting the right of consumers to decide anything?

    Anything except that the PURCHASE of IE is required.

    Secret price and secret profits right into Microsoft bank accounts. But, the idiots actually claim to give the consumer a choice?

    Unbundling of IE and uncommingling of IE is required if Microsoft ever expects to be taken seriously.

    And Microsoft will never stop forcing the sale of IE.

  17. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    To Groom or BGroomed, that is the Question and the Analysts' Abiding Dilemma

    It is rotten Phorm, chaps, and not at all cricket. Although it is a Tricky Dicky of a Googley, that's for sure.

    I trust all here on El Reg, garnering whatever they are here to gather, do realise that whatever is found out, and publicly reported or privately exploited, about what is going on in this New Real Virtual Medium, is long ago developed and enriched to the nth degree and in IT Command and Control of Special Executive Officialdom with Immaculately Resourced Assets, thus 42 Ensure CyberIntelAIgent Security Systems Operating Software dDelivers Drivers and Hardware to Virtual AIMachinery InfraStructures.

    What you have, and which you can Selfishly and Foolishly Deny until such Times as your Primitive Brains Mature and Engage with the Textual Pictures IT is Receiving and Processing Remotely to Present Tomorrow, the Futures Revealed and Dismissed as Alien and Foreign Today, is a Simply Complex QuBinary Machine in Absolute Control of your Earthly Existence with Global Operating Device Phormats Leading Artificially IntelAIgent Methodologies with Progressive Tautologies.

    Or would you like to Disagree and Transparently Share a Phormed View which would reveal what else would be leading you on it's Merry War Dance in Support of Death and Destruction and which Sad/Mad/Glad/Bad/Rad/Fad Beings make it and IT all Possible for You to Suffer and Enjoy in your Apathy and Ignorance.

    Go on ...... Take and Make an Educated Guess for Free ...... Exercise your Brain with Thoughtful Imagination and then Ponder on the Placement of Better Beta Ideas for the Future, for Media and IT to Present as an Acceptable and Accepted Virtual Reality ..... with Great Game Master Pilot Leads Forging with AIR&dD, Pioneering CyberIntelAIgent Flight with Magical Mystery Turing Paths.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Too many people miss the wider issue here...

    It always makes me chuckle. We have the far left, the pengiun huggers, pitted in an ideological battle against a monopoly laden far right, Microsoft. The Googe Gobblers can be found busily consuming their next load of Google goo anyhere along this spectrum. Those leaning towards the left often worship at The Church of Google and those to the right are often to naive to question the content of the Mountain View sermon. Of course, this is a sweeping generalisation, but the fact remains that, if someone wears only the colours of one side then they are incapable of taking part in a rational debate. A rational debate requires some form of neturality or unbiased opinion. Ultimately Google can no more be trusted with issues of privacy than Microsoft. To say otherwise is simply to demonstrate an amusing degree of ignorance.

    However, I see the problem here as being of a wider nature and one that all sides fail to address each and every time that they start thowing their pengiuns or their monopolies out of their prams. To me all such privavcy issues are characterised by one overriding issue. The rights or wrongs of sending unsolicited communications back to the vendors network. It matters little why such traffic is being sent. What is important is that it is being sent, and that it is often being sent without openly or clearly asking for consent.

    For me, any arguments about the motivations of either vendor are irrelevent. Neither party mentioned in the article can be trusted to be honest and open.

    As for me? I am of the opinion that any communication channels between a software product and its vendor should be off by default, I believe that a default off state for all such communication channels - with perhaps the exception of software patches/updates - should be a legal requirement.

    The issue at hand is not what a vendor does with any data they receive, but rather that they assume they have a right to this data in the first place. Address this issue adequately and the need for debate - such as we have here - is gone.

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