How Google's Chromium Took Over the Browser World

so in case you didn't know Google basically owns the internet now I'm sure you know that Google Chrome is the most popular browser in the world right now with a very comfortable 63% market share that gives Google a lot of control over the web because if you create the web browser then you control how everyone else experiences the web but you might also know that's not even the full story because chromium the open source version of Google Chrome that Chrome is based on is also widely used by other browsers so you've probably heard of all of these different browsers like Opera well opera uses chromium under the hood the valdi is also based on chromium and even Microsoft Edge finally gave in a few years ago and is now also based on chromium the only real contenders against Google's total Monopoly of the browser world is Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox because basically every other major browser is based on chromium and these days not just browsers but even apps are based on chromium if you've ever started the Spotify desktop app Slack figma Discord VSS code they're all using chromium under the hood so everything is chromium now and this might not seem like a huge deal but every browser being based on chromium is now leading to some issues with Google's near Monopoly of the browser Market they get to make all the big decisions regarding the future of the web and there's not much other browsers can do about it so you've probably heard some nefarious things that Google is trying to do to the web like kill off ad blockers or introduce web DRM and the problem with Google setting the standards for web browsers is that if other companies don't really want to go along with Google's vision of the web they don't really have much of a choice now chromium is open source so theoretically anyone can contribute to it but Google has so much control over it with all of the Manpower that Google has it's really hard for anyone else to actually make any significant changes to this giant project and so in effect Google basically decides what goes in and what doesn't to chromium and you probably even seen notices on websites these days that some websites won't even run in anything but chromium browsers and it's starting to feel like the bad old days of the web when Internet Explorer ruled the world and if you wanted to use a browser besides Internet Explorer well you were pretty much out of luck but you might be wondering how did chromium completely take over the browser Market why is every company that wants to make a web browser using chromium why don't they make their own browser or base it off of something else like Firefox and that's what I'm going to try to answer in this video let's talk about how chromium took over the world so Google Chrome was started with the best of intentions at least when you hear it from them so the goal of Google Chrome was to fix all of the issues of the slow stagnant browsers of the time and it's only because Google Chrome was so much better than everything else at the time that it really took off in the way that it did because it made so many big improvements to things like the UI it had this nice clean minimalistic UI that separated itself from everything else it was a lot more efficient as well because as an example every tab ran in its own process previously web browsers were built so that if one page crashed then it crashed the entire browser but with each tab having its own process if one page acts up it can just kill off that tab specifically and not crash the entire browser and another big reason that chromium is so widely used these days is because it didn't come with all of the baggage that the other web engines did so it was built from the ground up to overcome some issues with embeddability in case you don't know the web engine is basically what the browser uses to display the web page properly to you and it was built from the ground up to make this easily embeddable into other things so now you can use chromium anywhere whether you want to display web pages in your new browser that you just wrote or maybe embedded in your desktop app so you can code it with web Technologies you can even take chromium's JavaScript engine V8 and take it outside of the browser to do things like node.js basically you can take components of chromium and use them elere with very little Hassle and of course that's very useful if you're creating a new browser you don't want to completely write it from the ground up you can just grab chromium and stick it in there job done something like Firefox is a little bit different it's also open source so anyone can use it but you might have noticed that no major browsers are based on it the reason is that firefox's engine gecko is not as easy to embed as chromium's there were plans to create a new browser engine by Milla that would be easier to embed there they were going to put it in Firefox and call it Servo but unfortunately they never materialized and it was just scrapped by Mozilla after they laid off everyone working on it but that's just another example of Milla being Milla also at the time of Chrome's unveiling firefox's code base was just getting old and Bloated and developers preferred working with a new lean code base like Google's chromium and most developers are lazy there's nothing wrong with that they just want to pick the easiest option and chromium's code base was easier to navigate than milla's spaghetti coat at the time and the thing is milla's gecko can technically be embedded it's just from what I've heard from others it's a headache to implement it and nobody wants to go through the trouble to do it when you just have something easier like chromium right there even if Milla does get it together and makes their web engine as easy to embed as chromium chromium just has all the momentum most companies building a web browser are going to bit chromium because it's a safe option but you might be wondering why can't they just make their own browser from scratch that's something I've heard a lot in my comments but these days if you want to make a new browser you have to embed something you can't just make your own browser engine that's because the web these days is extremely complex back in the early days of the web back when you can make a blinking Marquee and put a bunch of animated gifts on your website and call it a day the web was just a collection of a few different HTML tags and CSS rules and just about anybody with a little bit of knowledge could be their own Web Master and run a website but the issue was it was also extremely limited if you wanted any sort of complex layout you had to do a million tricks and hacks to actually get your website looking the way you wanted to and if you wanted to go even further and create a complex web application like modern Facebook with tons of moving Parts it was impossible of course people who build websites they wanted better tools and so over the years there have been tons of useful additions to CSS and JavaScript that have made it so much easier to make and style websites and even write complex web applications now this is great for web developers but not so much for those creating the browsers but since the world of web development is that much more complex you can't just write a browser anymore with a small team you would have to implement thousands of CSS rules and JavaScript functions and have them all work to the specified standards and if something doesn't work exactly like it does in Chrome people are just going to use Chrome instead not to mention that the web is constantly changing so you would also have to implement the hundreds and thousands of changes to browsers that get added every single year and coming from a web developer web devs are lazy they're not going to test their website or their web app in every single browser out there they'll test it in the most popular browsers which sometimes is just Chrome if you have a small new browser with a different engine nobody's going to test to make sure that their website works in it because nobody cares and as a result users will just go for what works which is Chrome so it just isn't practical anymore to create a new browser engine from scratch even if you're a billion doll company even Microsoft gave up they were creating Microsoft edge with their own browser engine and eventually they just gave up and switched to chromium because it was easier not to mention that chromium already has a huge store of extensions that users aren't going to easily switch away from of course they're going to reach for chromium why would you reinvent the wheel but of course Google isn't doing all of this out of the goodness of their hearts now that's what they would say but they also stand to benefit a lot by having the browser and the internet in general controlled Google being a huge company likes to push all of these new browser standards forward as fast as they can so if you're a web developer and you want to use the latest and greatest features I don't know maybe you want to scope your CSS well that is a new feature that of course is only available in chromium browsers other browser engines like Apple's webkit and firefox's get-go can't keep up because they don't have the same resources as Google and so if you're a web developer and you want to use the latest features you know that it's always going to be in chromium first now Developers know that they shouldn't Implement new features until it comes to all browsers but that can take years and if most of their users are already using Chrome then it just makes sense to just push it in and just have everyone else deal with it now Google of course is a for-profit company they don't necessarily care about the best user experience they want to make more money and Google has made a lot of questionable decisions over the years so I've already talked about things like chromium changing extensions to manifest V3 which Nerfs things like ad blockers but but all of the browsers using chromium are just going to have to deal with Google's decisions whether they like it or not if you're a browser based on chromium let's take Brave as an example you might be able to fight back against Google for a while but eventually you're going to have to follow suit unless you have tons of resources to really Branch off from Mainline chromium and most of these browsers don't have those kinds of resources so they're just going to have to follow suit with whatever Google pushes and so that's how we got to where we are where every new browser is just a reskin of Google Chrome now you can fight against the man by being a rebel with your little Mozilla Firefox I'm still using Firefox and you might be wondering can a handful of rebels really fight back against the inevitable Google hegemony probably not but a little browser diversity is a good thing and maybe just maybe if you spread the word maybe get your friend to try Firefox instead of Google Chrome the internet might slowly start to become a little less boring and corporate

Have you ever wondered why every browser these days is based on Chromium? Why can't they make their own browser from scratch, or base it on something like Firefox? And is having every browser based on Chromium really a bad thing? Let's find out in this video. Browser tier list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5r6jFE8gic How to make Firefox private: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr8UFJzpNls 🌐 My website: https://ericmurphy.xyz 💸 Support the Channel: https://ericmurphy.xyz/donate 🎥 Watch my videos on Odysee: https://odysee.com/@ericnmurphy 0:00 Intro 1:13 What's wrong with everything being Chromium? 2:31 What's so great about Chromium? 5:26 Why can't you make your own browser? 7:47 What happens when Google controls the internet? 9:26 Conclusion