If you use Google Chrome and don’t want your online behavior tracked by marketers, today’s your lucky day. Chrome, currently the world’s most popular browser, just got an update with the much-requested “Do Not Track” feature — which Google promised it would release earlier this year.
Do Not Track is an increasingly widespread option. (Twitter added it back in May.) Its goal is to block cookies that give marketers some idea of how you live your life on the Internet. It’s generally used in aggregated data about consumer behavior, although many advertisers — including Google itself — use cookies to target ads to individual users.
As the company notes in a blog post, however, Do Not Track isn’t a silver bullet — every marketing firm in question has to agree to remove those cookies. “The effectiveness of such requests is dependent on how websites and services respond,” writes engineer Ami Fischman.
“Google is working with others on a common way to respond to these requests in the future.”
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Fischman also notes that the updated Chrome browser should use around 25% less battery life, at least when watching online video on Windows. The browser now uses a PC’s graphical chip to process video, rather than clogging up the CPU.
The update will be applied automatically for most Chrome users over the next few days. Do you have it yet? Will the Do Not Track feature matter to you? Let us know in the comments.