So if Chrome's ever made a UI change you disagreed with, then you're in a group that would have benefitted from sending Google usage data.
In terms of the restrictions on usage data, see https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#usages... .
I care about command line programs, less-interactive and non-interactive use. Truly, the best interface is no interface.
The whitepaper.html appears to explain how usage data is utilised in ways that help Chrome improve but does not appear to contain any restrictions on use of the data to help further Google's ad sales business, whether directly or indirectly.
It is the business model that I do not wish to support.
Producing software such as Chrome is just something the company is doing in the course of selling advertising and collecting maximal amounts of data from users, whether the data is anonymised or not.
One way to make the pages I visit load faster is to disable Javascript. Another is to remove (or block) advertising. Another is to put DNS data for these sites into local hosts or zone files.
Those actions are how I prefer to approach the problem.
However as far as I can tell, those are not actions Google wants to take. They have their own preferred approach.
It is possible there are users who are aligned with Google in terms of how they want to approach the problems created by misuse/overuse of Javascript and advertising.
It is also possible there are some users who have no idea why pages are slow to load.
Those groups might want to send usage data to Google.
However I am not in either group. I dislike the web advertising business that Google depends on and therefore must nourish and support.
As such, there is no reason I can think of why I would want to send data to Google.
Also, I have not checked but I wonder if Google is restricted in how they can use the collected diagnostic data. Are they prohibited from using it for the purposes of selling advertising?