AskHN: How much is Chrome and how much is Chromium? | Hacker News Reader

AskHN: How much is Chrome and how much is Chromium?

44 pointsThinkBeat39 comments

I have ended up using Microsoft Edge v2 (Chromium) a lot recently.

In part to attempt escape from Googles eco system.

Edge can now use Chrome Extensions without any problems, but that also bring problems.

If Google removes an extension from their store that now impacts Edge. If there are vulnerabilities in an extension that now impact Edge.

Edge has its own extension store but there are very few extensions that live there (so far)

What I have started to wonder if how much of Chrome or Edge is Chromium.

Is the extension hosting / executing code in Chromium? Is AMP in Chromium?

What are the borders between the open source project and the closed source derivative?

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One clear boundary is the use of Google APIs within Chrome [1]. Chromium derivatives must create and use their own equivalents for things such as Translation, Google Chrome Sync, Updates, etc. which are private Google services and not part of the open source Chromium project.

For extensions, one Google-specific part within Chromium is the chrome.identity API [2] - without it you cannot sign-in to some extensions (e.g. Google Drive). Google has recently released an open-source version of this into Chromium [3] so the boundary you're asking about is becoming a bit more open and clear.

[1] https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys [2] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/ident... [3] https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/27...

Chromium is almost everything. The easiest way to test it is to grab a Chromium binary https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium and see what it feels like. The short answer is that it feels just like Chrome. :)

The biggest difference is that there are no Chromium builds for security updates, nor is there a Chromium update server. (So if you're using it as your day-to-day browser, you probably want to be using nightly and updating it by hand.)

The extension code is in Chromium.

Flash was in Chrome, Widevine is in Chrome, etc. If you don't care about non-free extensions and DRM'd media, then you won't miss them.

The Google account login/sync stuff is in Chrome. You probably won't miss it either.

Have you tried Firefox with the 'Ublock Origin' add-on? No ads in years and snappy.

I tried to use it for years as my "personal" browser while Chrome was for work. It would regularly cause the system as a whole to be slow when video (Twitch/Netflix) was playing. Switched to Vivaldi for personal and everything works smoothly so far.

When did you stop using it?

~1 week ago. It had been an ongoing issue for the past few months.

On which hardware?

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) 3.1 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

I have approximately the same Macbook (but from 2015), one issue i have is playing 4K .webm videos on Youtube. It doesn't matter which browser, it even happens when i download the video and play it in another player. My CPU will spike and the fans start blasting.

4K videos in mkv/H.264 format i can play fine though.

The issue here is the hardware decoders capability;

Depending on which browser you use, and whether your Macbook is connected to power, websites will send you a different video/codec/size.

Here's a random post that sort of describes this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/409764

It works fine in another browser. So I don't think it is a hardware issue? Is there a situation where Chrome/Vivaldi would be able to use hardware the FF wouldn't? And 90% of my time is spent on power (top left usb-c port).

Using a different browser results in a different video (/codec) being downloaded. The different codec is what can cause your hardware/cpu to spike.

Switched to Vivaldi. It's amazing!

I was thinking of switching away from Chrome as well. Was there something about Vivaldi that made you use it instead of Brave?

I don't know much about either one of them except that Brave is (fully?) open source while Vivaldi is not.

Chrome is signed into my primary work account. Brave is signed into a shared work account. Vivaldi is doing my personal stuff.

I get that Chrome could do all of these alone with profiles but I prefer having the UX of separate applications for each.

Brave is built directly on Chrome/Chromium. You still get extensions from the Chrome store. Its underlying functionality is all chrome.

What would that accomplish?

> What would that accomplish?

What would what accomplished? Moving off of Chrome to a different Chromium based browser?

Presumably I would retain all the high quality that I enjoy from Chrome while avoiding Googles spyware services. Edge, Brave and others remove them. In the case of Brave I believe I would also get some decent adblocking without having to worry about what Googles eventual Manifest v3 enforcement will do to uBlock Origin.

I think it's quite important to state the OS you're using. All Browsers tend to fly on Windows, except for ironically MS browsers. Safari tends to be fastest on MacOS. Basically every mainstream browser sucks in performance, memory usage, cpu, battery usage and so on, on Linux distros, comparatively to the former.

Can't edit anymore, but you're absolutely right. This is on OSX. Safari is a gem, and I used it as my daily driver for 2 years. I switched to Chrome for work stuff because there are no equivalent necessary Safari extensions for some of the tools I use. Not sure why I didn't stay on Safari for personal.

I really wanted to like it, and the adblock story was good, but it did something wrong with some async js code, and sites like reddit would stop the world to wait until some tracker would time out (likely due to the adblock). This was a poor experience, to say the least.

I wonder how much something like SmartBlock [0] might help with that.

[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/03/23/introducing-sma...

If Firefox used macOS keychain for password management, sure. But that bug has been sitting there for 10 years or something.

> In part to attempt escape from Googles eco system.

i'll never understand this argument

google or microsoft, it's the same

just use chromium at this point, or better ungoogled chromium https://ungoogled-software.github.io/

Unlike Google, Microsoft is not primarily an ad-tech surveillance company. They're mostly a business software/services firm at this point.

Maybe it's a minor distinction, but I think it's a real one.

I think it's a huge distinction. Google's entire business is built on tracking users and serving ads based on that tracking data.

It’s not their primary focus, but some Microsoft products do have tracking. E.g. Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/general-privacy-...

Is less of their business tracking users? Probably. However they do still track you.

There's a massive difference between tracking your every web search, page visit, email keyword, location IRL, and tracking when your apps crash in an Operating System.

Did you visit the link?

First sentence: > Windows generates a unique advertising ID for each user on a device, which app developers and advertising networks can then use for their own purposes, including providing more relevant advertising in apps.

Since we can't escape these companies collecting our data maybe it makes sense to silo which data they're able to collect. Basically don't put all your data in the same basket.

How soon we forget (Microsoft) history.

Microsoft's past doesn't hurt me, I'm not living in 1999. Google is tracking users today.

It's not for lack of trying. Microsoft would love to get a taste, but their online products don't stick.

"Is AMP in Chromium?"

Only to the degree that Chromium supports standards AMP might use, like signed exchanges. Most of AMP isn't in the browser. It can appear that way, as Google presents search results differently for non-Chrome browsers. Similarly, some browsers actively strip AMP urls and replace them.

similarly to your experience, I'm using Brave browser (based on chromium) since recently (after watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE), mostly attracted by the built-in adblocker

I used to use Brave, but ever since they attempted to modify links without user-consent, I've since left them for Firefox + Edge (for those times I absolutely need a chromium browser).

This is my preference as well.

Congrats, you made me switch (back) to FF!

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300772/microsoft-google-... may help a little.

Edge is based on Chromium...

OP is aware of that, they are asking specifically where the line between Chromium and Chrome itself are.

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