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by n1231231231234 2417 days ago
> with all the google bits removed

well, except for the fact that it's still a chromium browser and google really sets the general agenda for all chromium browsers.

2 comments

For those interested, we (I am a Brave employee) have the deviations (things we disable or patch out) from Chromium called out here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
What do you mean by "general agenda"?
Google basically decides what to implement, what not to implement, what to deprecate.

For example the current controversial change: Google says "slow web is bad" and deprecates an API that allowed extensions to do almost unlimited work for any web page. Oops. Adblockers depended on that and did want to do almost unlimited work for any web page, and that wasn't a bug, but the API gets dropped, AIUI because Google wants performance. The reason doesn't matter though. Google gets to set the agenda, no matter what its reasons are.

I'm not sure if that's what the person I was asking meant by "general agenda", considering the change you're talking about (Manifest v3) doesn't even affect Brave[0], or any other Chromium based browser that simply doesn't wish to implement that specific change. Chromium based browsers change their code all the time, and decide whether or not incoming changes will be fully adopted by their browser themselves.

[0]https://twitter.com/flamsmark/status/1088170219695071232?s=0...

Any divergence from upstream means

    a) ongoing cost of merging
    b) security updates delayed because of merging.
This means that there is a limit to how much any fork can allow itself to diverge. They will have to pick their battles and accept the least-worst.

It's possible the limit is high enough that it wont be a problem in practice though.