DEV Community

Discussion on: Chromium and the browser monoculture problem

Collapse
 
mdedetrich profile image
Matthew de Detrich

The biggest issue (which has been hinted elsewhere) is that even though there is an open source version of the Chrome engine called Chromium, Google still has overwhelming power over Chromium.

This has been revealed lately in the deprecation's of the Extension Manifest 3 (which has been noted elsewhere) as part of the WebRequest API which is being done in Chromium. Google has been deceptively saying these changes are done due to performance reasons however their real reason (which was also revealed in an obligatory K12 document they had to reveal to shareholders) is that pure Adblockers such as U-Origin are posing a significant risk to Googles revenue (advertising is Google's primary source of income).

If Chromium wasn't owned by "Google" and was in charge of a non-profit neutral organization than I would agree with you. There is already however a browser that fits this description, its called Firefox. Firefox, unlike Google, doesn't have ulterior motives and conflicts of interest.