Chrome OS Looks To Add Fingerprint ID To Google Account-Based Payments

It looks like a Chromebook with fingerprint sensors is finally on the way — and that support will be built directly into Chrome OS.

“Digging deeper into this commit, I found reference to OOBE or the ‘out of box experience’ that refers to the initial setup process when starting up a Chrome device for the first time or after a complete reset,” wrote Gabriel Brangers of Chrome Unboxed. “Much like sensors many of you have on your phones, users will be prompted to set up fingerprint IDs or can dismiss the setup and enroll later if they so choose.”

The commit even includes a roadmap to show the specific location of the sensor. It looks like users will be able to enroll up to three fingers, and utilize the feature for identification and to approve purchases.

“A fingerprint sensor on a laptop may seem like a major yawn in 2018, but for Chromebooks that live and breathe completely inside of Google’s ecosystem, it’s a pretty big deal,” added Brangers.

Google has been making recent strides to boost security for its users. Last year, the company announced that its Safe Browsing service now protects more than three billion desktop and mobile devices. The new numbers were an increase from one billion in 2013 and the two billion reported in May 2016.

Safe Browsing is an anti-malware tool that keeps Chrome, Safari and Firefox users from visiting potentially dangerous sites. Safari and Firefox have since adopted the service, as have web and app developers, such as Snapchat.

Google activated Safe Browsing as a default feature for the Google Chrome browser for Android in 2015. The company said the feature uses machine learning to detect “more badness,” and that it is “continually evaluating and integrating cutting-edge new approaches to improve Safe Browsing.”

“Over the last few years, we’ve rethought how Safe Browsing delivers data,” Google’s Stephan Somogyi and Allison Miller wrote in a blog post. “We built new technologies to make its data as compact as possible: We only send the information that’s most protective to a given device, and we make sure this data is compressed as tightly as possible.”