The Age published an article today on Google’s new browser Chrome. Consumer Watchdog expressed some concerns over this new browser back in October, and sent a letter to Google’s founders.

Chrome is all about personalisation of course; from the homepage itself (which includes information such as your most frequently visited sites) to the way the browser can predict possible URLs you may wish to visit. I don’t see why this comes as such a surprise; Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has expressed Google’s long-term plan before: personalisation. He told the Financial Times in 2007, ‘We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation”.

One of the complaints in the Consumer Watchdog letter about Chrome

…surrounds Chrome’s navigation bar, which can be used to enter a website address or a search query. The group points out that as users type in the navigation bar, Chrome relays their keystrokes to Google even before they click “Enter” to finalise the command. “The company is literally having this unnoticed conversation with itself about you and your information,” Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court said (Google’s Browser Labelled a Digital Trojan Horse, 04/08)

Google Chrome seems to have anticipated the hysteria that would ensue over privacy, because it offers a “privacy mode” where you can apparently search the web without data being siphoned off and sent back to Google all the time.

According to Google’s blog, they have reluctantly agreed to ‘anonymize’ their search data after 9 months. This doesn’t mean they will lose the data of course – just that your IP address will not be attached to it after 9 months. Previously they held this information for up to 18 months, and used it to personalise everything from search results to advertising (your Google Reader history is also incorporated in this, but I haven’t worked out what that relationship is exactly).