If you want to use Google Chrome but are concerned or have questions about Google's policies for collecting usage data, you might want to give Iron a try.

Iron, developed by German software company SRWare is Chrome stripped of all the user ID information that gave the German government cause for concern.

I don't speak German, but the guys at the Incomplete-News Project have helpfully published an English translation. According to them, Iron is essentially the Chromium source code, with the following modifications:

• No unique user-ID
• No user-specific information is sent to Google
• No alternative error messages
• Crash information is not sent to Google
• No Google updater

I personally don't have a problem with having my search data transmitted to Google (as I'm sure it is in Safari and Firefox with my search bars now), but I do understand the concerns about data-collection potential.

I downloaded Iron, and other than featuring the same squished blue logo that CodeWeavers uses in its version of Chromium on the default tab page, everything worked exactly as expected.

XP and Vista users can download Iron from SRWare's site.
[via the Incomplete-News Project]