Wait, wait, all you have to do to justify spying now is claim you're doing it to help people? Well damn, have I got a new hobby!
I wouldn't use the term "spying on you", but rather "learning about your preferences" since this is what it does, it's not scanning your hard drive trying to find your personal ultra-secret documents you are hiding there somewhere. That's spying. See the difference?
A supplier learning things about you isn't always bad per se. A barber learning how you would want your hair cut, can make you visit a little easier as you don't have to explain the same thing over and over again. A restaurant learning you would know that you you prefer meat with potato Gratin, and would open this page of the menu before handing it over. They would know that you prefer beer instead of wine, so they would hand over you the beer list opened and the wine list closed on the table, just in case you changed your mind. the chef would know you want your stake medium rare, that you never eats any mushrooms so he replaces those with some asparagus that he knows you like, and then he would put on some extra red wine sauce. A clothing store that knows you, would suggest only black or dark colored clothes as long as you don't say you want something different, they would walk you past the fancy suits section and show you directly to the hood shirts. The rest of the shop is still there of course, but if you only want to look at the things that really interest you, then this make your life easier.
CRM was here long before computers and the Internet, but it's more effective now. Done right, it's a win-win situation for both the customer/visitor and the supplier.
Of course I know that some people are more paranoid than others, and I guess this is the reason of the browser Chrom
ium that is the same browser as Chrome, but *without* Google's branding, auto-update mechanism, click-through licensing terms, usage-tracking, the built-in PDF viewer and Adobe Flash Player. And please note that this browser uses exactly the same user agent identification string (it identifies itself as being Chrome (because essentially it is)), so this browser is included in the statistics above. If you didn't know about this and want to read about it, go
here, or
here.
Personally, I still prefer Chrome though, because I don't feel its spying on me but *aiding* me based on my preferences, making my Web Browsing a bit easier and better.
I find Facebook being a far much bigger threat to my integrity, but I use that as well...
