If you're Apple, wanting to kick the Google Chrome web browser for lacking in privacy, while plugging Safari, where would be the best place to do so? On YouTube of course, which is owned by Google's mothership Alphabet.
It's not a bad concept, seagull cameras flapping around, invading people's lives and creating a nuisance. Apple has for some years now decided to champion user privacy in its marketing, which is a lot easier to communicate than the opposite. Which is to turn users into a product that is sold to advertisers and marketers, and which you then have to defend and explain how it sits with your security stance and user protection measures.
Apple touts the following features in Safari that it says Google Chrome doesn't have:
- Fights tracking with machine learning
- Removes unique tackers from URLs in Private Browsing
- Hides your IP address from known trackers
- Prevents web extensions from seeing your browsing by default
- Does not share location data with search engines
- Blocks known trackers in Private browsing
There are other info-sharing oddities as well, as a developer discovered:
So, Google Chrome gives all *.google.com sites full access to system / tab CPU usage, GPU usage, and memory usage. It also gives access to detailed processor information, and provides a logging backchannel.
— Luca Casonato 🏳️🌈 (@lcasdev) July 9, 2024
This API is not exposed to other sites - only to *.google.com.
Online privacy matters, but how much do users care? If web browser market share is a measure of that, not a whole lot. Most Internet metrics companies peg Google Chrome at steady two-third marketshare approximately. That's the "pure version" of Chrome, and there are other browsers built on the open source Chromium engine that it uses, like Microsoft Edge and Opera for example.
Safari comes in at 10 per cent or less for desktop operating systems, and under 20 per cent for mobile. This despite the Webkit-based browser being bundled with Apple's iOS and iPadOS for mobile devices, and macOS for laptops and desktops.
Make of that what you will. Meanwhile, Chrome users can go through the built-in Privacy Guide in the browser, at chrome://settings/privacy/guide (copy that into the URL/website address bar), and take a look.
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