Snoop Much?

http://www.techworm.net/2015/06/google-chrome-secretly-downloads-an-audio-listener-to-your-pc-that-can-snoop-on-you.html

Wow. <_<

I wonder if that's also in non-Google maintained builds such as; Dragon, Chromium, Iron, etc., which are builds for the more privacy concerned users without all the Google rubbish.

This is a pretty sensationalist article. Also this has been in chrome for quite a while.

It makes it sound like google is putting a secret virus on your computer to spy on you. When in reality its looking for one key phrase "OK Google" so you can do an audio search. I actually do this all the time on my phone (not as much now that I have an iphone, but it was a daily occurrence when I had my galaxy s5). The whole article hinges on the idea that google may spy on you. Sure they could but are they? Probably not. They know enough about me with my web searches, emails, ect already. I doubt anyone has time to listen to hours upon hours of audio logs on every single user. Also I haven't seen any reports like "why is chrome using so much data" which would indicate their recording all the time.

This isn't even the only service doing this. Hell, amazon even sells a device that does this. My xbox is always listening, my phone, tablet, and probably more. You can choose to be scared of this or you can embrace it. Because in all reality is actually incredibly useful.

I myself am not scared of it. I'm not rigged up with tons of computer gadgets, just my ol' PC. And you're probably right, it does sound a lot like sensationalism.

Perhaps a better view of what this is all about.

The main idea behind the feature is to give users options to use their voice to run commands instead on devices supporting the feature.

Google is criticized for dropping the code for several reasons:

Users don’t get a choice. The code is downloaded to the system automatically.

There is no switch to disable it.

Only a binary is provided, no source code.

The extension is enabled by default.

The extension listens to the microphone.

The extension is not listed on chrome://extensions.

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/19/googles-in-hot-water-after-dropping-binary-code-in-chromium-for-linux/