Most browsers currently differentiate themselves from Chrome with a greater focus on user privacy, ranging from simple cookie blockers to blocking any resources that could remotely be used to identify you. If a report from The Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Chrome might implement its own tracking blocker — albeit one that wouldn’t affect most of Google’s own scripts and cookies.
Speaking with people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will soon roll out a dashboard in Chrome with controls to block tracking cookies. However, the tool is not expected to significantly affect Google’s own tracking scripts, which could give the company a major advantage over its advertising rivals (and potentially open up the company to more anti-trust lawsuits).
The feature has reportedly been debated inside Google for at least six years, with work accelerating after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. Google I/O starts tomorrow, so we might learn more then.
