"They would have to be calculating the keystrokes on the client side and then transmitting them along, but those numbers would change as the average WPM changes with every key stroke you make. I find it hard to believe that they would be transmitting that information.
It could be an interesting idea to play around with the code though."
I really think that Chrome sends every letter. If you try, you'll see. Put just one character and some links you never opened appear on your list. I don't think that these links are in the code. I didn't checked it in the source (the code is available here: http://dev.chromiumdotorg/developers).
"With privacy you always have to question motivation. What possible motivation would Google have for monitoring typing speeds?
Profit? Unlikely. And I don't see any non profit public campaigns to improve peoples overall typing speed. Neither do I see any newspaper or online news articles stating ""World typing speed in crisis"".
Sure its possible for Google to deduct this info, but how accurate would it really be? Even if keystrokes were being statistically measured, they're sent as packets, and because of this due to unpredictable network latency.
I applaud your creative thinking, people like you help technology progress..."
"As others have noted, by only sending suggestion requests after a noted timeout, Google would likely only be able to approximately average your typing speed; which is actually how typing speed is normally reported (words per minute, where word = 5 characters). While this is fun information to have, I doubt Google is as interested in this as the actual content of the omnibar.
You might be able to disable some of this behavior by going to options, ""under the hood"", and un-checking the Privacy items:
Suggestions for navigation errors Address bar suggestions DNS pre-fetching Phishing and malware protection Usage statistics and crash reports
Or, in a private-browsing window of chrome, you will only get suggestions based on your history."
