Mixed feelings on this. Personally, I'd switched back to Firefox from Chrome years ago, because I'd lost some trust in Google, and didn't want a browser that re

Mixed feelings on this. Personally, I'd switched back to Firefox from Chrome years ago, because I'd lost some trust in Google, and didn't want a browser that required me to sign in to make use of its features. My own personal use case for Chromium wasn't for any Google-specific features, it was the same reason I would occasionally use Internet Explorer back in the day -- a site I needed/wanted was broken in anything else. AFAICT, the removal of these API keys doesn't break any of the things I used Chromium for. But on the other hand, I recognize that I am an outlier amongst outliers. The everyday user of Chrome probably does make use of and depends on the Google-specific services embedded in the browser. And so by revoking the API keys for those features, Chromium is crippled and no longer at feature parity with Chrome. While I don't care, a lot of other people will, and so those who might be inclined to install Chromium are going to be less inclined if Chromium is now less featureful and useful to them. Only the especially hardcore about software freedom and personal privacy are going to to see installing the feature-stripped and less-useful Chromium as worth the tradeoff. Those persons are like me, outliers amongst outliers. The net effect? Distros stop providing packages for a browser with an install base that shrinks to something too small to be worth supporting. And now, the only option becomes the proprietary Chrome. Honestly, this strikes me as a tactic similar to, if not the same as "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" for which Microsoft was so roundly lambasted in the late 90s and early 00s. The question remains then, what to do about it? Anti-trust or other regulations? Something else?