This is why we need alternative browser engines like Firefox. If Chromium becomes the only game in town then Google will become the gatekeeper to the internet. While Chromium is technically open source, its direction is driven entirely by Google with community having little to no say in the process.
Of course, it is always possible to fork Chromium, and a few companies like Brave have done so. However, these are largely skinning efforts that don’t change the internal workings of the engine. In case where Google makes significant changes that are harmful to the users, the effort of maintaining a fork will rise significantly.
Another problem is that once you have a single browsing engine then the standard becomes whatever the engine is doing. We’ve already lived through this with IE dominating the browser market. I don’t see why anybody would want to go back to that.
This is why we need alternative browser engines like Firefox. If Chromium becomes the only game in town then Google will become the gatekeeper to the internet. While Chromium is technically open source, its direction is driven entirely by Google with community having little to no say in the process.
Of course, it is always possible to fork Chromium, and a few companies like Brave have done so. However, these are largely skinning efforts that don’t change the internal workings of the engine. In case where Google makes significant changes that are harmful to the users, the effort of maintaining a fork will rise significantly.
Another problem is that once you have a single browsing engine then the standard becomes whatever the engine is doing. We’ve already lived through this with IE dominating the browser market. I don’t see why anybody would want to go back to that.