Chrome is open source, so in case something like this happen you can either investigate the source code, or create a more privacy compliant version. No such luck with I.E. or Safari.
I'm pretty sure that it's the main line of development and I regularly receive new features, new bugs and new bug fixes as days passes. After some time all this goes to the chrome beta and finally in the chrome release.
I don't think that google adds tons of code 'behind' the back of the opensource repository which is then merged only a few weeks later, because I see a gradual change (aka. the phenotype of those changes) in the daily builds from the chromium repository.
For a list of some of differences between Chrome and Iron see: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron...
http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.ht...
...and it was less than flattering.
Instead he's needlessly forking the project to "bring a lot of publicity to my person and my homepage". That's not being a good open source citizen.
When in fact Google would be happy to take his patches, and most of those data-sharing features are improving the user experience (like type-ahead suggestions etc.).
That just rubs me the wrong way.
Ouch :)
I know lots of ppl who would not see any problem.
Although it would be very non-google... but lately...