Google Launches Chrome Extension To Solicit User Feedback About Its Browser

Google launched a new Chrome extension today that’s a first of its kind for the search engine giant. The new Chrome User Experience Surveys extension will occasionally pop up brief surveys about the user’s experience when something unusual happens in the browser. That could be a notification or a malware warning, for example, and Google says
it will take the user feedback to improve Chrome.

Google says it won’t pop up more than two surveys per day and a total of four per week, so the noise should remain relatively low. Answering each survey will take about two minutes.

Google clearly knows that some users won’t want to install this extension because they are worried that the company tracks their browsing habits. The company notes that it is not monitoring your browsing history through the extension (though if you’ve opted in to any number of Google programs, the company obviously already knows more than enough about your search and browsing habits). “The only data this extension sends to Google is when these infrequent events occur and your survey responses,” the company says. All of the feedback remains anonymous.

Google isn’t exactly dangling any carrots in from of users to incentivize them to sign up for this program, but if you want to give this a try — and maybe help make Chrome better and easier to use in the process — the extension is now available in the Chrome Web Store.