On privacy is it Chrome or Google's search engine that does the tracking or both?
Joe
Reading Google's privacy policy will shed some light:
https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
Technically, Google probably does not collect information that is not already available to other service providers. The difference is the business model. For a browser like Firefox, Mozilla has no "personal" interest in your data. Companies that use the web can access information from your browser that they are trying to capture. They get a small window into some specific data of use to them.
The Google products and services are designed from the ground up as data miners. They capture every scrap of available information about anything and everything, cross reference it, and mine it as an information source about you. Rather than being on the outside looking in, snatching tidbits of data through a peephole, the Google products are on the inside, with complete access to everything you do on the product--your activities, preferences, patterns of behavior, etc. If you use their browser, email, and search engine, there is very little about you and your life that Google does not know.
Do they use it for nefarious purposes? Probably not. They mainly look for ways to make money using the information commercially. Personally, I find it a bit scary that information of such breadth and depth exists; compiled and available or susceptible to being abused. Forget spying by the NSA; users voluntarily hand all of this information to a commercial entity that is in the business of collecting and mining it for commercial purposes. It's "1984", only Big Brother isn't the government. There is a scene in Jurassic Park where the lab guys are explaining to Jeff Goldblum about all of the safeguards they have in place so nothing can go wrong. His response is that nature always finds a way.
But I digress. The short answer is is both.