Matt Cutts answers all the questions I’ve thought of so far. But then I don’t spend much time worrying about grand conspiracies, or imagining evil intent behind everything Google does. And yes, I checked the option for “Help make Google Chrome better by automatically sending usage statistics and crash reports to Google”. I’ve been a developer — I know how much it helps the development team to have instant, accurate fault reports.
See also “Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com?”
Update: David Pogue writes this of Google Chrome in the New York Times:
Will Google ensure that its own services run better in Chrome than in other browsers? Is this part of Google’s great conspiracy?
That’s a no and a no. Chrome is open-source, meaning that its code is available to everyone for inspection or improvement — even to its rivals. That’s a huge, promising twist that ought to shut up the conspiracy theorists.
I’ve tested Chrome briefly — sure is simple and different. I won’t invest much time in testing until the Mac OS X version is released.
I really like Google Chrome because its very fast… but i keep my Firefox !