Chromium (web browser)

Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project, mainly developed and maintained by Google. This codebase provides the vast majority of code for the Google Chrome browser, which is proprietary software and has some additional features. Chromium's logo is identical in shape to that of Google Chrome, but with blue colors instead of being multicolor. The Chromium codebase is widely used. Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, Opera, and many other browsers are based on the Chromium code. Moreover, significant portions of the code are used by several app frameworks. Google does not provide an official stable version of the Chromium browser, but does provide official API keys for some features, such as speech to text and translation. Chromium is a free and open-source software project. The Google-authored portion is shared under the 3-clause BSD license. Third party dependencies are subject to a variety of licenses, including MIT, LGPL, Ms-PL, and an MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license. This licensing permits any party to build the codebase and share the resulting browser executable with the Chromium name and logo. Thus many Linux distributions do this, as well as FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Chromium provides the vast majority of source code for Google Chrome, so the name "Chromium" was chosen by Google because chromium metal is used in chrome plating. Chromium lacks the following Chrome features: Automatic browser updates API keys for some Google services, including browser sync The Widevine DRM module Licensed codecs for the popular H.264 video and AAC audio formats Tracking mechanisms for usage and crash reports While Chrome has the same user interface functionality as Chromium, it changes the color scheme to the Google-branded one. Unlike Chromium, Chrome is not open-source, so its binaries are licensed as freeware under the Google Chrome Terms of Service. The Chromium browser codebase contains about 35 million source lines of code. Chromium has been a Google project since its inception, and Google employees have done the bulk of the development work.