If your definition of being snooped on is whether confidential information is leaked or nothing is happening, that is short sighted.

Google analytics is ubiquitous and you're tracked to your bones especially if you're logged into your Google account and while they don't read your Gmail email content, they put you in the social graph according to any email address or URL in your email and they have better idea about your past more than you do.

I still use Google search as there aren't better alternatives but I never use Gmail nor Chrome as I have plenty of alternatives for those.

I'm not happy about tracking (I personally use Firefox + uBlock) but with the state of the web as is, I'll settle for the browser not stealing confidential info, thanks.

> while they don't read your Gmail email content

Depends on what you mean by "read". Google (and MS, and likely others) certainly parse the content. For example pulling out times for upcoming flights you've booked without you needing to click into the email.

Obviously I have no way to know if they actually do anything else internally with the result of parsing. I have to assume that they do though.

Are they committed to not snooping, or just to trying to not do something too outrageous or obvious with the data they gather?

like what?

Chrome's entire reason for existing is that Google wants control over the client, so they can control the capabilities of the web. If they are snooping on the data of webpages or what you type, they will lose that. Also the fact that millions of eyeballs are on it, including security researchers who would be more than happy to report it.

There are dozens of "phone home" features in Chrome that by default leak everything from what you type to every single url you visit. Check out https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium to see the extent of patching they need to do to shut some of those pipes off.

They are doing it now. Maybe this comment needs to go back to 2011 when no one knew better.