No Chromium

Use a different web browser

What is Chromium?

Chromium is a web browser developed by Google. Many modern web browsers use its codebase and extend upon it, for example:

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Why is this a bad thing?

Chromium based browsers dominate the market. This means that any changes Google makes to the Chromium code base are also present in the browsers that build on it. As Chromium based browsers are the majority, websites have to adapt. This also forces non chromium browsers like Firefox to implement these changes. This gives Google the power to steer the web in a direction they benefit from the most.

What can I do

You should use alternative browsers like Firefox or, even better, LibreWolf .

Examples

Web Environment Integrity

The Web Environment Integrity spec is a proposal by Google engineers to add a mechanism to browsers that verifies them and the platform it's running on to be trusted by third party (attester). This is often compared as being DRM for Websites.

As an example Google Play is named as an attester for Android. Of course this would enable Google to mark their own Browser, Google Chrome, as trusted. Furthermore Google would be able to discourage the use of Browsers that harm their business model (selling ads) like Firefox, a browser that has a rich ecosystem of ad blockers and tracker protection.

On Windows Systems, Microsoft will likely play the role of the attester and encourage the use of Edge. Which third would attest for a Browser to be trusted on Linux distributions is not clear yet. There might be different attesters being used in different distributions. More niche distros might have trouble finding a third party to attest for their platform.

By implementing this spec Google is also forcing other browsers to do the same. Browsers that don't implement the spec would simply not be trusted by websites for demand the browser to proof it is trusted.

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