Despite a poor reputation for privacy, Google’s Chrome browser continues to dominate. The web browser has around 65 percent market share and two billion people are regularly using it. Its closest competitor, Apple’s Safari, lags far behind with under 20 percent market share. That’s a lot of power, even before you consider Chrome’s data collection practices. Is Google too big and powerful, and do you need to ditch Chrome for good? Privacy experts say yes. Chrome is tightly integrated with Google’s data gathering infrastructure, including services such as Google search and Gmail – and its market dominance gives it the power to help set new standards across the web. Chrome is one of Google’s most powerful data-gathering tools. Google is currently under fire from privacy campaigners including rival browser makers and regulators for changes in Chrome that will spell the end of third-party cookies, the trackers that follow you as you browse. Although there are no solid plans for Europe yet, Google is planning to replace cookies with its own ‘privacy preserving’ tracking tech called FLoC, which critics say will give the firm even more power at the expense of its competitors due to the sheer scale of Chrome’s user base. Chrome’s hefty data collection practices are another reason to ditch the browser. According to Apple’s iOS privacy labels, Google’s Chrome app can collect data including your location, search and browsing history, user identifiers, and product interaction data for “personalization” purposes. Google says this gives you the ability to enable features such as the option to save your bookmarks and passwords to your Google Account. But unlike rivals Safari, Microsoft’s Edge, and Firefox, Chrome links this data to devices and individuals. Although Chrome legitimately needs to handle browsing data, it can siphon off a large amount of information about your activities and transmit it to Google, says Rowenna Fielding, founder, and director of privacy consultancy Miss IG Geek. “If you’re using Chrome to browse the internet, even in private mode, Google is watching everything you do online, all the time. This allows Google to build up a detailed and sophisticated picture about your personality, interests, vulnerabilities, and triggers.” When you sync your Google accounts to Chrome, the data slurping doesn’t stop there. Information from other Google-owned products including its email service Gmail and Google search can be combined to form a scarily accurate picture. Chrome data can be added to your geolocation history from Google Maps, the metadata from your Gmail usage, your social graph – who you interact with, both on and offline – the apps you use on your Android phone, and the products you buy with Google Pay. “That creates a very clear picture of who you are and how you live your life,” Fielding says. As well as gathering information about your online and offline purchases, data from Google Pay can be used “in the same way as data from other Google services,” says Fielding. “This is not just what you buy, but also your location, device contacts and information, and the links those details provide so you can be identified and profiled across multiple datasets.” Visit OUR FORUM to learn more.

This morning in a live stream, Huawei officially kicked off the launch of Harmony OS, its in-house operating system and (among other things) its replacement for Android. The company announced a new watch, a new tablet, and a new phone powered by HarmonyOS. The company also said it would be updating a massive list of 100 different Huawei Android phone models to Harmony OS over the next year. With today's announcement, Huawei looks like it has two completely different operating systems that it calls "HarmonyOS." First is the IoT and smartwatch version of HarmonyOS, which is based on Huawei's LiteOS and is open source. The second version of Harmony OS is for phones and tablets and is a fork of Android and uses the Linux kernel (Huawei is very reluctant to admit this). Having what seems like two totally different operating systems share the same brand name leads to a lot of confusion, and you can make a lot of claims about the IoT version of HarmonyOS that don't apply to the phone version. For instance, TechCrunch spoke to Huawei and reported "Huawei denied speculations that HarmonyOS is a derivative of Android and said no single line of code is identical to that of Android. A spokesperson for Huawei declined to say whether the operating system is based on Linux, the kernel that powers Android." This statement is true of the IoT version but untrue of the phone version. Meanwhile, the company said the complete opposite thing to the German site ComputerBase, which quotes Huawei's software president as saying "To make sure our existing users can still enjoy the experiences that they are familiar with in our phones and tablets, Huawei uses the open source code from AOSP in HarmonyOS on the condition of complying with open source license rules and fulfilling related responsibilities and obligations." In the wake of the US export ban on Huawei, the company is currently struggling to be independent from the US supply chain. China has plenty of hardware-component manufacturers that Huawei can rely on, but China doesn't do huge amounts of software development. So software is the company's biggest problem. HarmonyOS is supposed to be the answer to that problem, so Huawei wants to sell the OS as an in-house creation that allows it to break free of US influence. Huawei doesn't seem to like it when you point out that Harmony OS for phones is heavily based on Android. We tried the OS in the official emulator a few months ago though, and there was no question that we were looking at an Android fork. HarmonyOS was identical to what Huawei ships on its Android phones, save for a few changes to the "about" screen that swapped out the words "Android" and "EMUI" (Huawei's Android skin) for "HarmonyOS." Huawei even missed a few spots where the OS still said "Android." The OS ran Android apps and supported every Android feature with an implementation that was identical to Android. It used the Linux kernel and listed the version on the "About" screen. Development used the "Android Debug Bridge," Huawei's SDK listed 27 different Android libraries in the third-party software list, and it compiled Android apps with a different file extension. It was Android with no discernible differences. In today's show, HarmonyOS (for phones) got a light reskinning and looks slightly different from the emulator. The main new feature was a new quick settings panel that shows the company isn't afraid to copy both big mobile OSes: the design is ripped straight from iOS's Control Center, while the new functionality—showing multiple media players and a sound output picker—is an Android 11 feature. The HarmonyOS emulator we looked at was based on Android 10, but this media quick settings feature suggests this version of Harmony has been upgraded to Android 11 and Huawei is just cribbing more of the codebase. HarmonyOS also has a feature called "Super Device," which just seems to be a networking feature along the lines of Google Cast, AirPlay, or Bluetooth. When all the devices in your house run Harmony OS, Huawei says you'll be able to use some pedestrian-sounding networking features like pairing a drone to a smartphone for remote control, using a tablet stylus on your PC, or connecting wireless earbuds to your phone. The company showed a plugin for Huawei Windows PCs that would let you quickly transfer files to a phone. Huawei imagined some wild smart home integration like tapping a phone against a toaster oven to look up recipes. There was also a HarmonyOS-power refrigerator. Visit OUR FORUM to learn more.