Google Chrome Features In Microsoft Video

The browser game is an interesting one, these are free products backed by huge companies that spend a significant time trying to attract users to their system for viewing web pages. Like all product positioning, these companies are trying to decide what features users will be attracted too. Its all about outperforming their rivals.

Although Google Chrome isn’t currently vying for Microsoft’s Internet Explorers position as the most popular browser, Microsoft still seem to be keeping a eye on this young upstart.

Microsoft has posted a video (though I don’t currently seem to be able find it on the Technet site) entitled “Windows Internet Explorer 8: Protecting Your Privacy”. It features Pete LePage, a product manager on the Internet Explorer team talking about how IE includes features design to protect the users privacy – such as the separation of the address bar and the search box. As Mr LePage puts it:

“By keeping these boxes separate your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you are visiting aren’t automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else.”

The video then takes a slightly surprising turn, you are then shown Google Chrome (using default settings) running alongside a web debugging proxy tool called Fiddler – this tool allows you to see the web traffic between the computer and the internet:

“As I start to type an address in the address bar Fiddler shows that for nearly every character I type Chrome sends a request back to Google. I haven’t even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain and sites I’m visiting”

The video then shows Internet Explorer 8 under the same test, an address is entered into the address bar but Fiddler shows no traffic until return is pressed, even then it is just web traffic, nothing is sent to a search provider.

I suppose you could argue that Chrome doesn’t know if you are typing in a search request or website address when you are typing into the bar, so transmitting that data back to Google is done in good faith. The counter argument would surely be that IE has separate address bars and search bars and therefore systematically deal with such security matters in a more private manner. (It is also worth bearing in mind that after trying Fiddler with IE8 – if you type into the search box then, as you would expect, every keystroke also shows web traffic.)

It just shows how Microsoft must be viewing the ‘long game’ in relation to Google Chrome. It may not be challenging them for top spot at the moment, but they seem to rate its strength over time.

..If you want to see the video for yourself then it is on Arstechnica.com. If you want to try that web debugging proxy tool the check out Fiddler's homepage.

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