Yes it's a bit ironic that someone uses Google's ad programme, maybe a bit hypocritical, while at the same time criticising their privacy track record.

Bit because someone makes money with something doesn't mean it's a scam. Because someone brags about making making in a chat channel doesn't make it a scam either.

The article you're pointing to is apparently written by a fan of Google, and tends to gloss over the implications of sending unique information back to Google, as if they don't matter and can be explained away at face value in terms of how Google frame this. But that's the position of the author of the article, it's not the position of others.

Google's track record on the broad structures of privacy are abysmal to put it mildly, and overall user privacy is not a part of Google's strategy. Anything that draws attention to that is no bad thing in my book.

Because some relatively small changes were made in SRWare Iron, doesn't make them totally worthless. A lot of people are too daft to configure this stuff themselves. People are free to use it or not use it. Personally I think Chrome is crappy ugly browser and isn't 'super fast' as promised on any platform I've tried it on. But it's useful to have different browsers around.

It's insofar a scam that the Iron developer makes claims about features of Iron which range from having no meaning at all to plain ridiculous seemingly in order to generate clicks, all hyprocrisy aside.
All those "features" are basic chromium settings you can change within a minute or two.
Here's someone that offers a not up-to-date, unsigned, maldocumented chromium binary with a few trivial settings changed, and that in very irregular intervals.

The well up-to-date Chromium stable from http://www.freesmug.org/chromium features (in accordance with Chromiums release calendar) Chromium 28 stable while the latest Mac build of Iron is still based on Chromium 26 (release date: Feb 11th, 2013).

There have been 3 (!) security updates since version 26.
I hope we don't have to argue about the importance of keeping your browser up to date in order to keep your system safe.That alone to me would be a deal breaker.

And even if the author of that article was a "google fan", his case is far better documented than any part of the SRWare website - the browser is probably the most hostile environment for your computer anyway - why on earth choose a maldocumented, poorly maintained, month old binary from some dubious developer who uses agent smith as an avatar over the official well documented up-to-date version from either chromium projects or freesmug?

People with Snow Leopard can use the FreeSmug Chromium builds. SRWare developer ceased to support the "old" OS.

http://www.freesmug.org/chromium

Latest stable build (v24) works flawlessly on 10.6 without annoyances.

@cutie2011,

Yes, that is the primary version of Chromium, i.e. the one to which you point; however, if I read between the lines correctly, unlike SRWare Iron, Chromium still does some level of usage tracking. I don't see any mention of lack of usage tracking at the chromium site, although it would seem to be a major feature to taut if it were the case.

Can anyone else more informed comment on this?

@Lumac52,

I'm no Chrome apologist by any measure, but there is a way to disable the google auto update feature:

In terminal:

"defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0"

http://support.google.com/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=go&answer=147176

@bbw7,

Thanks, you're right, Chrome has fortunately now made it possible to disable auto-updates. I almost switched back to Chrome for this reason, but for now I'm sticking with Iron because I prefer the way it turns off suggestions in the omnibox. See http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php