By their own admission, "not only does Google collect your name and email address, Google also collects your physical address, your exact location, your contacts, advertising data, product interaction, search, and browsing history." [1] And that's Chrome (a Safari wrapper at that moment) on iOS. You may assume they collect at least as much on platforms they own.
But Chrome is not "collecting" this information secretly. Users are voluntarily giving this information to associate with their Google account. Chrome "collects" your physical address because it gives you the option of saving what "Home" is to your account, and a lot of people like that feature, so they use it.
Besides which, we probably differ a great deal about "voluntarily giving." To me, it sounds like the defense of the mob. "These people gave us their money voluntarily. Ask them!"
> Chrome "collects" your physical address because
Because it reads your IP address and Wifi access point, and can compare that to a list of known ip addresses and access points, which they collect with their Maps cars.
Voluntary is a tricky word. Choice isn’t binary, in fact it’s not even discrete.
They’re subtly, in millions of ways, most predating the Internet, manipulated into making that choice. And, more importantly, believing they willingly made that choice.
Consumer behavior is complex and is the result of hundreds of years of technology and economic growth. If I plop some hypothetical human who is on his first day on Earth, he probably wouldn’t make that choice.
At some point, the user has to take responsibility. If you ask Google to save your home address, you can't then turn around and go "Chrome is collecting my physical address!!"
The responsibility can, and should, be spread between all responsible parties, not just concentrated at the end-point.
This requires a reframing of how responsibility is thought about in the US, but we do think this way sometimes. We kneecapped many industries we’ve felt have influenced poor choices in individuals.
Chrome consistently pushes to make it easier for websites to track you -- by being the slowest browser to incorporate privacy protections like third-party cookie isolation, by eliminating extension APIs used by ad/tracker blockers, and by adding new features which expose more fingerprinting surface to websites. This disproportionately benefits Google because Google runs some of the largest web tracking networks (reCaptcha, Google Analytics, AdSense, etc). Even if Chrome was separate from Google, Google (along with other ad companies) could probably keep paying them to sabotage users' privacy.
Chrome also directly uploads a lot of data to Google. It's technically possible to use Chrome without syncing your browser history to your Google account, but a surprising number of people I know mysteriously managed to turn on sync without knowing it. Other Chrome data-collection initiatives, like Core Web Vitals, also provide a lot of value to Google's other businesses. Those are other products that Google could pay directly for.
Is that a distinction without a difference from an end user perspective?
Chrome’s defaults are the main reason anybody is tracked by cross-site cookies any more, and that tracking massively and directly benefits Google’s business.
