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Google Chrome: Soon without unique user ID

Soon, Google’s browser Chrome will be available without unique user IDs.  Until now, Google sends a unique ID for each installation to its update service.  That is one of the reasons why Google Chrome is not as widespread in Germany as it is in other countries.

Google has always emphasized that the ID used with Chrome is not connected to user data.  It is solely used to count the number of Chrome users.  In the future, Google will avoid this ID, by making use of new algorithms that can guess the overall user count quite precisely.

From now on, an edited beta version of Chrome 4.1 is available for download.  For testing purposes, the ID and the new algorithms are both integrated.  After the tests are finished, the ID will be disabled.

However, Chrome will still have an ID for versions offered via Google’s marketing partners.  This ID is not user-specific, but multiple users share the same ID.  The marketing ID is used to pay out revenue to Google’s affiliates.  If you download Chrome directly from Google, you will get a browser without any unique browser ID, Google promises.

Furthermore, Google wants to make more transparent which data gets sent and received in the background.  In whitepapers and videos, the company explains when which data are transmitted to Google.

Google is also expanding Chrome’s privacy settings: In the future, you can disable Javascript and Cookies on a per-website basis (which is already possible in the Dev channel).  User can edit the software settings so cookies are deleted after each session.

With the current Chrome 4.1 Beta, Google also introduces an automatic translation feature.  This makes use of Google Translate and translates websites from languages that do not equal the browser settings, to the user language.

You can download the new Google Chrome Beta from google.com.

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