Apple has been the subject of a plethora of antitrust investigations in recent times. According to Reuters, recent privacy changes from Google, which would see its Chrome browsers ban some cookies, have caught the attention of the U.S. Justice Department too.
Investigators are asking whether Google is using Chrome, which has 60% global market share, to reduce competition by preventing rival ad companies from tracking users through cookies while leaving loopholes for it to gather data with cookies, analytics tools and other sources, the sources added. The latest conversations, which have not been previously reported, are a sign that officials are tracking Google’s projects in the global online ad market where it and No. 2 Facebook Inc control about 54% of revenue.
Apple has officially released its iCloud Keychain password feature for Google Chrome on Windows, AppleInsider reported. The new extension means that when using the new Chrome browser users will be able to sync their passwords across devices running Apple and Windows operating systems.
“[The new] iCloud Passwords is a Chrome extension for Windows users that allows you to use the same strong Safari passwords you create on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac when visiting websites in Chrome on your Windows PC,” says Apple in the extension’s listing on the Chrome Web Store. As well as requiring the Google Chrome browser, iCloud Passwords needs iCloud 12.0 for Windows. That in turn requires Windows 10 version 18362.145 or higher, and can be downloaded from Microsoft. Once installed, iCloud Passwords will let you fill in the passwords created in Safari on Mac, iPhone, or iPad, when visiting a site in Chrome for Windows.
The UK’s Competition and Market Authority has launched an investigation into changes proposed by Google’s Privacy Sandbox project.
Dave Hamilton and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to discuss Chrome’s updater and alternate methods for keeping apps current.
Over the weekend Loren Brichter wrote about Google Chrome and how it makes your computer slow even when it’s not actively running.
Charlotte Henry joins host Kelly Guimont to discuss the iOS public beta release, and how Joanna Sterns inspired Charlotte to retry Safari.
Tests prove that Safari outperforms Google Chrome on a Mac. Because of that and the extra privacy, Charlotte is going to give it another try.
Google wants to follow in Apple’s footsteps by hiding the full URL in Google Chrome 85. Instead, with an optional (for now) toggle, users can choose to have the address bar display only the top level domain.
There’s no public explanation yet for why Google is pressing ahead with these changes, but the company has said in the past that it believes showing the full address can make it harder to tell if the current site is legitimate.
However, it’s also worth considering that making the web address less important, as this feature does, benefits Google as a company. Google’s goal with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and similar technologies is to keep users on Google-hosted content as much as possible, and Chrome for Android already modifies the address bar on AMP pages to hide that the pages are hosted by Google.
In other words, Google doesn’t want people to be able to tell the difference between Google and the internet.
Charlotte Henry and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to discuss Charlotte’s move (back) to Google Chrome, and the first Security Friday!
Google engineers have proposed changes to Chromium that would break Chrome ad blockers.
In a note posted Tuesday to the Chromium bug tracker, Raymond Hill, the developer behind uBlock Origin and uMatrix, said the changes contemplated by the Manifest v3 proposal will ruin his ad and content blocking extensions, and take control of content away from users.
In totally unrelated news Firefox just gained 50 million new users.
Google Chrome has a nifty way to reset a lot of its options to their defaults, from what your startup page is to your enabled extensions. This is incredibly helpful if you’ve managed to get some adware installed within that browser! We’ve got the cleanup details in today’s Quick Tip.
Some people don’t want to use Google services because of privacy or other reasons. Whatever the case may be, here are some Google alternatives.
Google Chrome is gradually changing the alert in the search bar regarding the security of its website connection. John had mixed feelings about the early announcements.
Not sure why you might need to use private browsing mode in Safari, Firefox, or Chrome on your Mac? Here’s how to enable the feature, and some ideas on how it can help online.
Apple made it easy to block videos that autoplay on websites in Safari on macOS High Sierra and you can do the same in Google Chrome, too.
People are growing increasingly concerned with private browsing, given the state of internet privacy in the US and other countries, as well as increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks. Jeff Butts is one of those concerned citizens, and has found out about a browser that takes security and privacy as seriously as he does.
