The difference between Chrome and Chromium

The article I wrote today is a question that a friend of mine encountered in the interview. Today, I specially explain the difference between Chrome and Chromium. First of all, Chrome is the most popular browser, but it’s not the source browser. If we want to build our own browser on top of Chrome’s features, we’ll have to use Chromiun because it’s open source. Chrome and Chromium were both developed by Google. What’s the difference? Let’s take a look at the interface, on/off sources, features, performance, terms of use, and updates.

interface

The Chrome and Chromium user interfaces are almost identical, but there are some differences. For example, Chrome’s system titles and borders are disabled by default, while Chromium’s are enabled by default. In addition, chrome has a sharing function in the address bar, we can share websites, but Chromium does not have this function. The nuances of the interface are mainly that the two browsers are aimed at different users. Generally, The people who use Chrome are ordinary users who use it to browse the web, while chromium is mostly geeks, developers and users who experience new features.

Open/closed source

Chromium is completely open source and anyone can use and modify the code as they like. There are a lot of browsers based on Chromium. In addition, Chrome has added its own code to the Chromium code. This won’t matter to most users, but it will be necessary for some geeks and developers, for whom Chromium is a very transparent browser that anyone can modify without limit.

Functional differences

Google doesn’t want other companies to develop browsers that have similar or even the same features and capabilities as Chrome for business purposes. So Google took google-specific features out of chromium. Here’s a list of the differences in functionality between the two browsers:

For synchronization, even though synchronization is developed on the basis of Chromium, login and synchronization supported by Google cannot be used. Technically chromium doesn’t include the Widevine content decryption module, so you need to install the codec manually.

update

Chrome is easy to install and automatically updates after installation. But Chromium installation isn’t easy, and even on Windows, chromium installation and updates are a pain in the ass. Installing Chromium on Linux is completely different from installing It on Windows. It is often packaged as a sandbox snap application on common Linux versions. If you’re going to install it on a terminal and want to get it from the APT library, then it’s a Snap application. In addition, snap software may be incompatible with custom desktop themes, and snap applications take longer to start. If you want to update Chromium, you have to update it manually.

privacy

Chrome tracks usage and browsing information. And Google’s Chrome API lets websites detect when users are idle and when they are not, which is a serious privacy issue. Chromium, by contrast, is much better at privacy than Chrome.

performance

With advanced web applications and resource-intensive JavaScript, if a web browser doesn’t perform well, the experience will be poor when opening many active tabs. Some developers have used two popular benchmarks, JetStream 2 and Speedometer 2, to estimate chrome and Chromium’s performance on various tasks and responses, and found chrome to be better than Chromium.