New Version of Chrome Adds Do Not Track Privacy and Boosts Batteries

Google is out with the new Stable Release version 23 of the Chrome browser, which is notable for several reasons. Thanks to the way it handles video decoding, users on portable devices such as laptops who are, say, watching YouTube videos will get longer battery life. And, with this version of Chrome, Google has finally adopted the Do Not Track privacy protection scheme that lets users choose not to be followed when online.

In September, we noted that Google had finally started testing Do Not Track privacy protection in Chrome. As the Google Chrome blog notes, the new version wraps it in:

"This latest release also includes an option to send a 'do not track' request to websites and web services. The effectiveness of such requests is dependent on how websites and services respond, so Google is working with others on a common way to respond to these requests in the future."

ZDNet notes this, though: "Indeed, the meaning of DNT is the subject of intense debate across much of the tech industry. Although the type of tracking it is intended to block is generally the handiwork of marketing and advertising firms, those self-same companies have been trying to argue that DNT should ignore their tracking systems."

In any case, Mozilla supports Do Not Track as well, so both major open source browsers are making it a standard.

The Chrome Blog also details how the new Chrome can usher in better battery life:

"We recently enabled GPU-accelerated video decoding for Chrome on Windows. Dedicated graphics chips draw far less power than a computer's CPU, so using GPU-accelerated video decoding while watching videos can increase battery life significantly."

"In our tests [1], the battery lasted 25% longer when GPU-accelerated video decoding was enabled. Now Chrome users on Windows will experience longer battery life so they don’t get cut off while watching their favorite YouTube video on repeat."

You can find out much more about the new release of Chrome here.