Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am wondering if Google tracks clicks or user activity on their Chrome browser. Is the situation the same in Chromium?
I am not asking about Javascript code in the web pages that track user activity (like Google Analytics or any other). I wonder if Google in any way track the user activity from the Chrome/Chromium code.
In Chrome, clicks and user activity is tracked locally just like any other browser.
What is sent back to google is your searches, or partial searches, for auto-complete suggestions, and if you have instant search on, pretty much everything you type in the Google search bar.
They also track your sync data (bookmarks, history, etc.) You can see exactly what Google says they track here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/privacy/.
Some people speculate that Google also tracks a code string that is non-identifying, and used to measure the success of Google's Chrome promotion/marketing campaigns, along with early usage notes. However that last part is not officially acknowledged by Google.
Since Chromium is the open source browser it definitely does not track your user activity for marketing stuff. However it does track your click, if you mean by where you are surfing too, every browser does. If you want to stop this, go to settings and turn on "Do Not Track."
Google doesn't track clicks, Javascript does of course (and in turn the JS code is by Google so in a sense they do, but they aren't storing data of users clicks in a database or anything) and anyone that can write a script could track information (like clicks or keystrokes) if your system was compromised, but what Google cares about is essentially your searches and where you visit, depending on where you go on the net and what you click on your browser will accumulate cookies and you will have ads & spam mail 'personalized' just for you based on what sites you frequently visit. Chromium is open source and has no viable market start data mining and selling users data like other larger companies do.
