They abuse the fuck out of their monopoly, basically.
They made changes to limit the usefulness of adblockers (Manifest V3), they tried to force a remote attestation API (WEI API) a few years back that would let them do stuff like fully block users who aren’t running locked-down operating systems from using online banking software or accessing Youtube, they added many chrome-specific web APIs that are extremely helpful for fingerprinting and lock users into the chrome ecosystem, etc.
And if you’re running stock chromium, there’s a fuckton of telemetry calling home to Google servers constantly.
And browser is such a complex piece of software that you cannot just fork it easily and change those things within a weekend with a bunch of unpaid volunteers.
They abuse the fuck out of their monopoly, basically.
They made changes to limit the usefulness of adblockers (Manifest V3), they tried to force a remote attestation API (WEI API) a few years back that would let them do stuff like fully block users who aren’t running locked-down operating systems from using online banking software or accessing Youtube, they added many chrome-specific web APIs that are extremely helpful for fingerprinting and lock users into the chrome ecosystem, etc.
And if you’re running stock chromium, there’s a fuckton of telemetry calling home to Google servers constantly.
And browser is such a complex piece of software that you cannot just fork it easily and change those things within a weekend with a bunch of unpaid volunteers.
Unless you’re using Brave :)
So basicaly everything that made it through the android-google ecosystem also made it through chromium, is my take