The first step is to download the Portable Google Chrome installer from this link:

http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/download-manager.php?id=250

After the download is complete, which may take a few minutes, run the installer. The installer is a 7zip extractor. To get Portable Google Chrome set up on a flash drive, click the “…” button and choose the flash drive. Click Extract.

The “…” button is a browse button. You would click on Computer and then the appropriate drive.

The extraction does not take as long as the download. Portable Chrome is being extracted to your flash drive. When the extraction is complete, you may use the portable version of Chrome right away. Browse your flash drive and double-click its icon.

You will see the application immediately. Double-click the “Portable Google Chrome” icon to open the folder with the program files. Double-click the ChromeLoader icon, which is the application.

You will notice that the language is set to German by default. If you speak and read German, that is fantastic. On the other hand, you may not. Click the wrench button in the upper right corner of the screen and select Options. In this demonstration, only a few of the words are in German and everything else is in English. Usually, it is all in German. Select “Under the Hood” and under the Web Content section, click the “Languages and spell-checker settings” box.

You will see the language list and it may already have English (United States) as the default, but some content is still going to come up in German, so click Add at the bottom left of the screen and select the appropriate language.

Click OK. You may be prompted to restart for changes to take effect. Close all browsers, save all files and Restart. When you begin again, your portable Chrome will be in the language you selected. In this case, it is English.

Using Portable Google Chrome

This portable version works exactly the same way as the standard version. The same processes apply, except that you can now run it from any computer. Your favorite sites and web applications are progressively saved on the flash drive as you add them. Your browsing history is saved to the flash drive as well. The browser itself looks and functions normally.

The overall speed is generally slower than the PC non-portable version. This speed varies depending on the speed of the flash drive and its capacity. Use at least a 2GB flash drive. 4GB would be even better and anything higher would be overkill. This will run on Windows 7 and on Windows XP, so there is some versatility along with portability. Enjoy portable Chrome!

It did not take long though before some users figured out ways to remove or alter the client id so that the collected data was useless for Google. This article is going to show three different methods of editing or removing the Google Chome user id to make sure that no permanent data can be collected when using Google Chrome.

Users can check if the following methods work by viewing the contents of the Local State file when Google Chrome is running. The client id should not be visible in the file if a program has been used to remove it.

Google Chrome portable:

The portable version of Google Chrome was developed by a long term reader of Ghacks. Caschy is running his own (German) blog at Stadt Bremerhaven. The current version of portable Google Chrome can be downloaded at his blog. All that needs to be done is to unpack the contents of the download and run Chromeloader.exe.

A positive effect besides portability is the fact that every user will have the same id as long as they are starting Google Chrome using Chromeloader. The client id in the Local State file should read FA7069F6-ACF8-4E92-805E-2AEBC67F45E0.

Google Chrome Anonymizer:

Google Chrome Anonymizer is a tool that has been specifically designed to remove the client id from the Local State file so that the submitted data cannot be used to identify a user over several surfing sessions.

The software program can be started from any location on the hard drive and alters the Local State file directly before starting Google Chrome afterwards. This means that no client id is transferred to Google when using Google Chrome.

Manual Edit of Local State:

If you do not want to use the portable version of Google Chrome nor the Anonymizer then you could edit the Local State file directly and remove the client id entries manually from the file. The problem with this approach is that Google is creating new client id entries if the entries have been deleted previously.

This means that the user would have to edit the file manually every time before starting Google Chrome. The Local State file can be found in Documents and Settings\Profle Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\.