We have other venues such as the chromium-discuss mailing list and our feedback forums where it is appropriate to share your opinions. The forums are a place where we are set up to track user feedback and surface the most critical issues to the team without impacting the productivity of us developers who are busy trying to make Chrome work better.

Maybe it would have been useful for pkasting@chromium.org to actual link to the forums (perhaps one specifically for UI/Design issues...) or the mailing list instead of just the slightly snarky comments.

I think the greater point is that corruption doesn't always look like corruption. Other countries have helped mitigate this problem, but I seriously doubt the public knows about even a fraction of how often this happens on a global scale. Especially given how many countries are not open books when it comes to these sort of things. Not to mention the rampant corruption organized crime helps create. While a bribe is always a bribe, a bride doesn't always look like one.

The companies that offer bribes also need to be punished for doing so. The US enacted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/) to combat this problem but few companies ever get more than a slap on the wrist and a wink & nod. Both sides need to realize that offering or accepting a bribe is something that can cost them more than just a few dollars (or whatever the currency).

Now for the obligatory wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption
The global costs are quite large.

Just thinking about this briefly, I can think of at least one concern (though not directly related to privacy). Power companies (at least in the US) have shown that they are unable to secure their infrastructure. So allowing them to 'control' your settings *might* be allowing an attacker to do the same (or worse).

*sigh*

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