Comment by ajross

> while keeping them fully-armed.

That's sort of a fragile assumption though. I mean, yes, there's enough specificity in this number that it could be used (in combination with other fingerprinting techniques) to disambiguate a user. And yes, only Google would be capable of doing this. So it's abusable, in the same way that lots of software like this is abusable by the disributor. And that's worth pointing out and complaing about, sure.

But it's not tracking. It's not. It's a cookie that identifies the gross configuration of the browser. And Google claims that it's not being used for tracking.

So all the folks with the hyperbole about user tracking for advertising purposes need to come out with their evidence that Google is lying about this. Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature.