Chromium for Windows

Chromium is an open source web browser developed by Google. 31 Internet browsers are based on it. As of July 2019, the platform continues to evolve.

On the basis of Chromium, Google Chrome was created, which as of September 2018 was used by over 300 million people, and its market share was 60.6%.

The Chromium browser differs from the Google commercial browser:

• The speed of work. Chromium initially disabled PDF Viewer and Flash plugins, which makes pages load faster.
• Lack of auto-updates. The latest browser revisions have to be downloaded manually from the official website.
• Disabled collection of statistics about crashes while working with the program.

The latest beta versions of the Chromium browser are posted publicly, inviting you to learn about new features before they get into a stable revision. By default, the browser uses the HSTS and HTTPS protocol to transfer data securely to sites in both normal and forced mode. The Safe Browsing function is available, which downloads a database of fraudulent and malicious sites and then blocks them in real time.

The CSRF specification complements the protection, terminating the connection if an incorrect request from the site is made. Implemented support for the X-Content-Type-Options API and X-Frame-Options API to protect against clickjacking and MIME sniffing. Because of such definitions, it is not always clear what Chromium program is.

The stable operation of the software is ensured by the multiprocessor architecture: third-party modules, the rendering engine, installed extensions and the browser work separately. When you disconnect any of the components, it automatically restarts, preserving the integrity of the current session.

This decision gave rise to four features of Chromium:

• Having detailed information about the resources used by each component of the browser system through the built-in task manager.
• Freeing RAM immediately after closing a tab.
• Idle tabs use less RAM and are listed as a minimized application to the operating system.
• Components require more RAM than uniprocessor browsers.
• Synchronization with Google account and related search engine services (YouTube, Gmail, Google Play, Drive, Photo) is implemented in Chromium.

Chromium-based browsers

In addition to Google Chrome, an open source web browser was the basis for Microsoft Edge Chromium, pre-installed in Windows 10. Chromium was used in Torch Browser, Yandex Browser and Opera. It was used to create the infamous Amigo from Mail.ru Group, which stopped developing in 2018, and was replaced by Atom from the same company.

Chromium-based browsers are criticized for the same design and common bugs that are not fixed in alternative browsers. True, this is only part of it – Microsoft Edge has a minimalistic interface, Yandex Browser natively supports themes, has a built-in translator in 9 languages.