Developers of Google's Chrome browser added support to the browser's source code for the "Do Not Track" Web privacy feature yesterday. The feature will make its way through Google's various alpha/beta browser versions, and should make it into the stable version of the browser by the end of the year.

Do Not Track is a proposed standard that allows users to tell sites they visit that they do not wish for third parties to record their online activity. The feature has been controversial due to Microsoft's Do Not Track implementation in Internet Explorer 10. Redmond forces users to express a Do Not Track preference when first using Windows 8, and the default preference is to enable it. In retaliation, Apache has changed its default configuration file to completely ignore Do Not Track when sent by Internet Explorer.

Chrome's implementation is much less in-your-face. The setting is tucked away in the advanced section of the browser's settings page. When enabled, it sends the required header. Any third parties who respect the header will duly stop tracking activity—though the full implications of what this means for online advertisers and other third parties remain unclear.

The feature is currently available in Chrome's unstable Canary version; it should soon be integrated into the dev branch, then the beta branch, before making it into the stable version. With dev and beta branches typically taking about six weeks each, this means that the feature will become mainstream shortly before the end of the year.

With this change, Google is fulfilling the commitment it made to the White House in February to support Do Not Track. Of the three main browsers, Google has moved slowest on Do Not Track support. Mozilla Firefox added support in early 2011. Internet Explorer 10 with its Do Not Tack support is available today to corporate users with access to Windows 8, and should become more widely available on October 26th.