You can build Chrome without this by setting `enable_hangout_services_extension` to false. Of course, then none of the WebRTC stuff on google.com will work.
FWIW I once tried and failed to compile Chrome. My machine didn't have enough RAM to compile chrome at the time. Even though it was able to fully compile any other software I threw at it.
Yeah, you need a big machine.
I provide Chromium builds for AWS Lambda, compiling on a large EC2 instance.
Is that special to the Chrome codebase, or inherent to the fact that a web browser is now basically an operating system by itself?
I think parent's point was that Chrome is not open-source, chromium is.
But also this. Compiling Chromium from source is a nontrivial task, even for a senior dev, and requires an extremely powerful system.