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What's the deal with Chromium on Linux? Google at odds with package maintainers

29 points by fanf2 6y ago

dartharva 6y ago
> In my head this is translating as “Google limits it’s own ability to snarf data from unofficial Chromium builds” Right on. Why on earth is Google abandoning precious users to mine data from, especially when it's actually involving less effort than catering to Chrome users?
- tomComb 6y ago
  And why were these distro's (and their users) making the decision that they didn't want to use official Chrome, but would still use Google sync. And even if it made sense for the users, Google made Chrome open source and this has spawned many great (and some awful) projects and allowed even Google haters to use it, but this shouldn't mean they are also forced to provide related services.
  - rwha 6y ago
    I like the blue icon more. Also, only chromium is available in my distro's official repositories.
  - eesmith 6y ago
    Support for 32-bit builds and native BSD builds? That's two factors mentioned in the linked-to Hackaday piece. Following the links also shows things like disabling "some of the more intrusive Google features." Where did you get the idea that anyone thinks Google should be forced to support other browsers? The Hackaday piece even says "Google is going to run their business as they see fit. If they think allowing unofficial builds of Chromium to tap into their cloud services such as Sync isn’t worth it, it’s their prerogative to block them." The topic is more the annoyance that what had once been an official exception to the terms of service (which passed through legal and the VP level at Google) has not merely been rescinded, but treated as if it were never valid and its asserted mis-use "discovered" by an audit.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      More likely it's to keep down the likes of Brave and Opera than Chromium on Linux/BSD, which are probably barely a blip by comparison. If MS were smart, they'd open up their alternatives to the Chromium community. They've done such a good job at building goodwill the past few years, and would be a nice gesture.
      - eesmith 6y ago
        FWIW, the thread at https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/embedder-dev/c/NXm7GIKTNTE https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/embedder-dev/c/NX... says: > The Brave project has built a Sync server for their Chromium-based Brave browser: https://github.com/brave/go-sync https://github.com/brave/go-sync and it is open source but uses Amazon Cloud for their database backend storage.
        tracker1 6y ago
        Cool... thanks, wasn't aware of this... guessing Opera may have done the same... in which case Google are just being kind of a-holes about it.
lrvick 6y ago
They could have let users define their own sync server. Instead they just opted to limit user choice and cripple users that wish to opt out of Google services but obtain similar functionality from services they host or from a third party. This is how Google does things in Android too. https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/GlobalSearch/+/592150ac00086400415afe936d96f04d3be3ba0c https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Glob... Now that sync features will be closed source with no accountability, the potential for abuse for more data collection from users is high.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Anyone can modify chromium to use a different server, right? Google isn't the only one who can provide that code.
LockAndLol 6y ago
I'm pretty in the dark here since I don't have a google account, but what are these private APIs they're talking about? Is Google Sync the equivalent of Firefox Sync? If that doesn't work, but the actual browsing works, what's the big deal? People should still be able to build Chromium and their Electron apps. It's not clear to me what people are getting worked up about... what am I missing?
- tracker1 6y ago
  I'm thinking that this could be an opportunity for the likes of Dropbox or Microsoft... Dropbox as it could be a natural gateway to branding and for both an opportunity for more goodwill.
iio7 6y ago
Couldn't care less what they do with Chromium. Don't want their phone-home trash anyway.

29 points by fanf2 6y ago

> In my head this is translating as “Google limits it’s own ability to snarf data from unofficial Chromium builds” Right on. Why on earth is Google abandoning precious users to mine data from, especially when it's actually involving less effort than catering to Chrome users?

tomComb 6y ago
And why were these distro's (and their users) making the decision that they didn't want to use official Chrome, but would still use Google sync. And even if it made sense for the users, Google made Chrome open source and this has spawned many great (and some awful) projects and allowed even Google haters to use it, but this shouldn't mean they are also forced to provide related services.
- rwha 6y ago
  I like the blue icon more. Also, only chromium is available in my distro's official repositories.
- eesmith 6y ago
  Support for 32-bit builds and native BSD builds? That's two factors mentioned in the linked-to Hackaday piece. Following the links also shows things like disabling "some of the more intrusive Google features." Where did you get the idea that anyone thinks Google should be forced to support other browsers? The Hackaday piece even says "Google is going to run their business as they see fit. If they think allowing unofficial builds of Chromium to tap into their cloud services such as Sync isn’t worth it, it’s their prerogative to block them." The topic is more the annoyance that what had once been an official exception to the terms of service (which passed through legal and the VP level at Google) has not merely been rescinded, but treated as if it were never valid and its asserted mis-use "discovered" by an audit.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    More likely it's to keep down the likes of Brave and Opera than Chromium on Linux/BSD, which are probably barely a blip by comparison. If MS were smart, they'd open up their alternatives to the Chromium community. They've done such a good job at building goodwill the past few years, and would be a nice gesture.
    - eesmith 6y ago
      FWIW, the thread at https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/embedder-dev/c/NXm7GIKTNTE https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/embedder-dev/c/NX... says: > The Brave project has built a Sync server for their Chromium-based Brave browser: https://github.com/brave/go-sync https://github.com/brave/go-sync and it is open source but uses Amazon Cloud for their database backend storage.
      - tracker1 6y ago
        Cool... thanks, wasn't aware of this... guessing Opera may have done the same... in which case Google are just being kind of a-holes about it.

lrvick 6y ago

They could have let users define their own sync server. Instead they just opted to limit user choice and cripple users that wish to opt out of Google services but obtain similar functionality from services they host or from a third party. This is how Google does things in Android too. https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/GlobalSearch/+/592150ac00086400415afe936d96f04d3be3ba0c https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Glob... Now that sync features will be closed source with no accountability, the potential for abuse for more data collection from users is high.

alisonkisk 6y ago
Anyone can modify chromium to use a different server, right? Google isn't the only one who can provide that code.

LockAndLol 6y ago

I'm pretty in the dark here since I don't have a google account, but what are these private APIs they're talking about? Is Google Sync the equivalent of Firefox Sync? If that doesn't work, but the actual browsing works, what's the big deal? People should still be able to build Chromium and their Electron apps. It's not clear to me what people are getting worked up about... what am I missing?

tracker1 6y ago
I'm thinking that this could be an opportunity for the likes of Dropbox or Microsoft... Dropbox as it could be a natural gateway to branding and for both an opportunity for more goodwill.

iio7 6y ago

Couldn't care less what they do with Chromium. Don't want their phone-home trash anyway.