Washington Post columnist Geoffrey Fowler has decided he’s done with Chrome because he doesn’t like being spied on:
You open your browser to look at the Web. Do you know who is looking back at you?
Over a recent week of Web surfing, I peered under the hood of Google Chrome and found it brought along a few thousand friends. Shopping, news and even government sites quietly tagged my browser to let ad and data companies ride shotgun while I clicked around the Web.
This was made possible by the Web’s biggest snoop of all: Google. Seen from the inside, its Chrome browser looks a lot like surveillance software.
It’s wonderful that Fowler has seen the light. It’s a shame it took him so long.
Google Chrome has always been surveillance software. It didn’t become one — it has always been a means by which the Monster of Mountain View can vacuum up user data. That’s why it was created.
This site is over ten years old and has been warning that Google is “the web’s biggest snoop of all” for the entirety of that time. People in the tech press have known that surveillance underpins Google’s business model, yet they have chosen to use and recommend Google’s offerings anyway.
It seems like that is starting to change.
For Fowler, the last straw is Google’s refusal to protect users by limiting the extent to which cookies can be used for tracking purposes.
Google itself, through its Doubleclick and other ad businesses, is the No. 1 cookie maker — the Mrs. Fields of the Web. It’s hard to imagine Chrome ever cutting off Google’s moneymaker.
Like Matthew Green, he also felt betrayed when Google modified Chrome to make automatic sign-ins the default.
I felt hoodwinked when Google quietly began signing Gmail users into Chrome last fall. Google says the Chrome shift didn’t cause anybody’s browsing history to be “synced” unless they specifically opted in — but I found mine was being sent to Google and don’t recall ever asking for extra surveillance.
And so he has made the switch to Firefox.
Let’s hope many more people do likewise.