Google first chose the name "Chrome" for its browser.[12][13] Then the open-source release was named "Chromium" because chromium metal is used to make chrome plating.[1]
Chrome has the same user interface functionality as Chromium, but with a Google-branded color scheme. Unlike Chromium, Chrome is not open-source; its binaries are licensed as freeware under the Google Chrome Terms of Service.[14]
Chromium has been a Google project since its inception,[1][3] and Google employees have done the bulk of the development work.[15]
Google refers to this project and the offshoot ChromiumOS as "the Chromium projects",[2] and its employees use @chromium.org email addresses for this development work. However, in terms of governance, the Chromium projects are not independent entities; Google retains firm control of them.[3]
Google designed the first multi-process browser.[16][17] Compared to single-process designs, this architecture has better responsiveness with many browser tabs open and security benefits of process isolation, but with the trade-off of higher memory usage.[18][19] This was later refined as per-process website isolation, providing additional security.[18]
The browser engine was originally based on Apple's WebKit, which Google deemed the "obvious choice" of available options.[22] However, Google's novel multi-process design required engine changes. This divergence from Apple's version increased over time, so in 2013 Google officially forked its version as the Blink engine.[22][23]
Third-party libraries that provide essential functionality,[25] such as SQLite and numerous codecs, are written in C, C++, or beginning in 2023,[26][27] the newer Rust language.[4]
Google Chrome debuted in September 2008, and along with its release, the Chromium source code was also made available, allowing builds to be constructed from it.[1][33][34]
Upon release, Chrome was criticized for storing a user's passwords without the protection of a master password. Google has insisted that a master password provides no real security against knowledgeable hackers, but users argued that it would protect against co-workers or family members borrowing a computer and being able to view stored passwords as plaintext.[35] In December 2009, Chromium developer P. Kasting stated: "A master password was issue 1397. That issue is closed. We will not implement a master password. Not now, not ever. Arguing for it won't make it happen. 'A bunch of people would like it' won't make it happen. Our design decisions are not democratic. You cannot always have what you want."[36]
An alpha build of Chromium 3 for Linux
Version 3 was the first alpha available for Linux. Chromium soon incorporated native theming for Linux, using the GTK+ toolkit to allow it fit into the GNOME desktop environment.[37][38][39][40] Version 3 also introduced JavaScript engine optimizations and user-selectable themes.[41]
Version 6 introduced features for user interface minimalism, as one of Google's goals was to make the browser "feel lightweight (cognitively and physically) and fast".[21] The changes were a unified tools menu, no home button by default (although user configurable), a combined reload/stop button, and the bookmark bar deactivated by default. It also introduced an integrated PDF reader, WebM and VP8 support for use with HTML video, and a smarter URL bar.[42][43]
Version 8 focused on improved integration into ChromeOS and improved cloud features. These include background web applications, host remoting (allowing users centrally to control features and settings on other computers) and cloud printing.[46]
In February, Google announced that it was considering large-scale user interface (UI) changes, including at least partial elimination of the URL bar, which had been a mainstay of browsers since the early years of the Web. The proposed UI was to be a consolidation of the row of tabs and the row of navigation buttons, the menu, and URL bar into a single row. The justification was freeing up more screen space for web page content. Google acknowledged that this would result in URLs not always being visible to the user, that navigation controls and menus may lose their context, and that the resulting single line could be quite crowded.[51] However, by August, Google decided that these changes were too risky and shelved the idea.[52]
In March, Google announced other directions for the project. Development priorities focused on reducing the size of the executable, integrating web applications and plug-ins, cloud computing, and touch interface support.[53][54] Thus a multi-profile button was introduced to the UI, allowing users to log into multiple Google and other accounts in the same browser instance. Other additions were malware detection and support for hardware-accelerated CSS transforms.[55][56]
By May, the results of Google's attempts to reduce the file size of Chromium were already being noted. Much of the early work in this area concentrated on shrinking the size of WebKit, the image resizer, and the Android build system.[57] Subsequent work introduced a more compact mobile version that reduced the vertical space of the UI.[58][59]
Other changes in 2011 were GPU acceleration on all pages, adding support for the new Web Audio API, and the Google Native Client (NaCl) which permits native code supplied by third parties as platform-neutral binaries to be securely executed within the browser itself.[60][61] Google's Skia graphics library was also made available for all Chromium versions.[62][63]
Since 2012
The Chromium Material Icon used until 2022
The sync service added for Google Chrome in 2012 could also be used by Chromium builds.[64][65] The same year, a new API for high-quality video and audio communication was added, enabling web applications to access the user's webcam and microphone after asking permission to do so.[66][67] Then GPU accelerated video decoding for Windows and support for the QUIC protocol were added.[68][69]
Other changes in 2013 were the ability to reset user profiles and new browser extension APIs.[70] Tab indicators for audio and webcam usage were also added, as was automatic blocking of files detected as malware.[71]
Version 67 added the security benefit of per-process website isolation.[18] Then version 69 introduced a new browser theme, as part of the tenth anniversary of Google Chrome.[72] The same year, new measures were added to curtail abusive advertising.[73]
Since 2021, the Google Chrome sync service can no longer be used by Chromium builds.[74][11]
Starting with version 110, only Windows 10 and later are supported for Windows users.[75]
With either approach, the custom app is implemented with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other web technologies. Moreover, the app can be readily deployed on the operating systems supported by Chromium. Since the 2010s, many apps have been created this way. (Two examples are Spotify and Slack.)[83][84]
^"Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS!". 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2021. Due to constraints of the iOS platform, all browsers must be built on top of the WebKit rendering engine.
^ ab"BSD license". Chromium repository. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
^Dougerty, Conor (12 July 2015). "Sundar Pichai of Google Talks About Phone Intrusion". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 July 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2019. There is a reason when we built Chrome we minimized everything to do with Chrome so that all you spent time on was the website you cared about at the given time. We wanted the users to focus on the content they were using. The reason the product was named "Chrome" was we wanted to minimize the chrome of the browser. That's how we thought about it.
^Grunberg, Karen; Xie, Daniel (14 January 2014). "Stable Channel Update". Chrome Releases. Archived from the original on 16 January 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2014.
^"Open Source - Spotify". Retrieved 1 December 2023. Here are the sources to the great Chromium Embedded Framework that is used by the Spotify Desktop client.
