Inside Google

With Google adding a browser to its search engine, cloud applications, ad tracking and toolbar, it already knows more about you than even your mother could. But Consumer Watchdog thinks the Lords of the Web should still make it easier for people to have a bit more privacy…

Consumer Watchdog has "called on Google’s founders and directors to adopt new privacy safeguards that allow for anonymous internet and software use". In a video, the organization criticizes Google Suggest, and the Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome browser. It says:

    Chrome’s Incognito mode lulls consumers into a false sense of security that their actions are completely private and free from prying eyes when in fact they are not.

    "Chrome provides Google unprecedented dominance over the transmission of computer data and warrants higher privacy standards," wrote Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court and Policy Advocate John Simpson.

The site provides a form letter you can send "to ask Google’s board of directors to agree to basic privacy rights for all Web users".

You can, of course, turn Google Suggest off. However, its combination of search logs, Google applications such as Gmail, advertising tracking across the web, the Google Toolbar and Chrome browser enable Google to harvest vast amounts of information about the things users do.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has an InPrivate mode, and Apple’s Safari has a Private Browsing mode. Yesterday, Private Browsing was also added to the pre-release (developer) versions of Firefox 3.1, according to a blog post by Ehsan Akhgari: Don’t leave a trace: Private Browsing in Firefox. He also explains how to start Firefox in Private Browsing mode. However, as he says:

    Private Browsing aims to help you make sure that your web browsing activities don’t leave any trace on your own computer. It is very important to note that Private Browsing is not a tool to keep you anonymous from websites or your ISP, or for example protect you from all kinds of spyware applications which use sophisticated techniques to intercept your online traffic. Private Browsing is only about making sure that Firefox doesn’t store any data which can be used to trace your online activities, no more, no less.

It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference. Not many people actually go in for anonymous browsing. Is that because they don’t know, or because they just don’t care?