CHROMIUM : Chronicle of a technical colonization.

In 2008, Google launched a movement that would be remembered as one of the most brilliant and dangerous in the history of free software: it released the source code for its Chrome browser under the name Chromium. At first glance, it was a gesture of openness, an offering to the world of open source. But deep down, it was an act of strategic domination, executed with surgical precision.

Google did not release Chromium to share power, but to expand its control over the web infrastructure, disguised as collaboration. Like a digital Trojan horse, Chromium was presented as modern, secure, fast, free… and behind that facade, the real conquest began.

From browser to digital civilization

While most browsers were simply “vehicles” for accessing the web, Chromium was something else:

If a common browser is like a car, Chromium is like an entire car factory, including everything from engine design to the robots that assemble it.

Its scale is titanic: more than 300,000 files, hundreds of modules, automatic testing, distributed infrastructure, and thousands of developers around the world, including giants such as Microsoft, Samsung, Opera, and Brave. Today, most modern browsers do not compete with Chromium: they use it.

Openness was the trap.

By making it open-source, Google let everyone use it… but under its architecture, standards, and pace.

You don’t need to use Google Chrome to be under its power: just use any browser based on Blink (the rendering engine) and V8 (the JavaScript engine). There you are, in its world.

21st-century digital Rome

Google understood something that others didn’t see in time:

Whoever controls the browser engine controls web standards.

Whoever controls web standards controls the future of knowledge, communication, commerce, and surveillance.

And so, while Firefox, Safari, or alternative projects propose, correct, or resist, Google dictates the rules.

Today, when Google launches a new API (WebGPU, WebAuthn, WebUSB), it tests it on millions of users with Chrome.
Then it says, “This is what users want.”
Others must adapt… or their users will see a broken web.

This is not competition. It is technical colonization.

The illusion of freedom

You can de-Google Chromium. You can compile it yourself, remove all its calls to servers, APIs, extensions, and achieve a 100% private version.
Yes, you can break its logic from within.
But you don’t change the playing field. You’re still in an architecture you didn’t design.

Still, there are those who try. Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, and even those who want to go further: create a browser from scratch. Redefine what it means to browse.

The last resistance

Firefox remains the only major browser that is not giving up. It uses its own engine (Gecko), its own engine (SpiderMonkey), and is still maintained by the Mozilla Foundation.

But even Firefox is cornered. Its market share is small. Its funding depends, ironically, on Google.
And its ethical proposals, although brilliant, are slow in the face of the technical tsunami of Blink/V8.

The final dilemma

Today, almost all roads on the web lead to Chromium. As in ancient Rome, there is peace, order, speed… but everything is centralized.

Do we want to continue browsing within a digital empire that defines the rules of access to human knowledge?

Or will we build our own tools, engines, visions?

Because yes, it is possible to break with this logic. It is possible to start from scratch.
And not just to create another browser…
But to recover the soul of the web.