[bsclifton]

(Brave employee here) We actually have a fair chunk of deviations that we maintain (link already shared by Brendan, but here it is again) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...

We have a pretty comprehensive patching system which you can read more about here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Patching-Chromiu...

There is a small team of folks here constantly working on rebasing the next Chromium version on Brave. They fight these deviations and try to minimize the patching as much as possible- so future versions are easier and easier. We even have some clever UI patching for the Polymer pages

There definitely have been challenges - for example, with Chromium 69, the network delegates were moved over to NetworkService which broke our shields code. But I'm really proud of the work done to minimize things. For a long time, the team rebasing Chromium was just one person... and we've always delivered Chromium upgrades and updates to Brave users within 24-48 hours of Google's stable channel