Chrome Eliminates Google's Middleman Problems

With its release of Chrome, Google is distributing a browser that will give the company direct access to the user, and more control over the data it gets. If Chrome catches on, the result would be a boon for Google's cash cow -- advertising.

Chrome is a direct assault on Microsoft's dominant market position in the browser space, and it shares some of the privacy features of IE 8. But the bigger picture is control in the cloud of the direct and indirect details of internet life and how those will distill into the perfection of online pitches.

Ad Age took a quick look into the matter, quoting blogger Nick Carr of "The Big Switch" on the potential for Google’s new product:

"To Google, the browser has become a weak link in the cloud system — the needle's eye through which the outputs of the company's massive data centers usually have to pass to reach the user — and as a result the browser has to be rethought, revamped, retooled, modernized."

Naveen Selvadurai, vice president of engineering at location-based social media platform Socialight, thinks the privacy issues are tricky but that users are willing to give up certain amounts of it -- if they're given benefits that they want:

"The wording behind it will be tricky, but I think it's going to be a powerful play. We saw Facebook trip last year with Beacon, but if and when it’s done right, it's got the potential to be a game changer."

How will Google compete? Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), says that from what he’s seen, Google's "Incognito" tool functions in a similar way to Internet Explorer's privacy settings, "but without as much granular detail."

Working the controls themselves, Google could tailor their product to get the most relevant data from users possible -- targeting their advertising even further and sidestepping any restrictions that third-party browsers may have now or implement in the future.

In an e-mail to Wired.com, Google said that in "Incognito" mode web pages and downloaded files aren't logged, that each session begins without any cookies and that all new cookies are deleted when a window is closed -- conventional protections that are more about not letting the next person who uses your computer know what you've been up to.

But the feature does not mask your IP address and therefore does not make your session in incognito mode completely private because many web sites record IP address information. The incognito feature is primarily designed to protect your privacy on your own computer."

"Incognito" also allows users to open a separate window in privacy mode while still providing information to third parties -- and Google -- from other tabs on the desktop. This option could go a long way toward providing Google with information that would be lost if users remain in the full-throttled privacy mode of other browsers.

Google has navigated these waters successfully before. Gmail's launch was met with screeching privacy backlash, but do you know anybody who doesn't have an account? Enabling page rank on your Google toolbar also tips the balance away from privacy, but yields the company valuable aggregatable data that can be aggregated.

The search giant is still working out the details on Chrome's privacy features, and many other aspects of the browser. "What they tell us is that they are still working out what users want in a browser — they want feedback," says Schwartz. "I think people will want more privacy features."