Chrome for a Cause extension contributes to charity with every tab you open

Google's Chrome for a Cause extension promises to donate money to a charity for every new tab you open in Chrome until this Sunday, December 19. At the end of each day you can choose where the money will go, and you have five charities to pick from:

• Doctors Without Borders -- an independent, international medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid in 70 countries
• The Nature Conservancy -- a conservation organization working internationally to protect ecologically important lands and waters
• charity:water -- a non-profit that aims to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations
• Room to Read -- seeks to change the lives of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality
• Un Techo para mi Pais -- works in 19 countries across the Americas to build transitional housing for impoverished families

You can choose a different charity each day, or the same one every day, it's up to you.

Here's how Chrome for a Cause works: you install the extension from the Chrome Web Store. Then, you go along browsing all day, and the extension button will show you how many new tabs you have opened that day. If you click on the button, you'll see details about how much difference you've already made -- for example, my current 17 tabs provide 0.7 vaccinations, 1.7 books, 1.7 trees (isn't it funny that the numbers for books and trees are always identical?), 0.2 square feet of shelter built, and 0.1 person's drinking water. As mentioned above, at the end of each day, you get to choose which charity the money will go to. You can also share the news about the extension straight from its menu to Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and Orkut.

The exact amount of money each tab opening collects is never mentioned. And you should know that there are limits to what you can do with this extension. A 250 tab per day limit is enforced for each user, and the maximum total contribution amount is $1 million.

Still, this is a neat idea from Google, so why not run and download Chrome for a Cause right now?

Tags: browsers, charity, chrome, chrome for a cause, ChromeForACause, donate, google, google chrome, GoogleChrome