Software:Ungoogled-chromium

From HandWiki
ungoogled-chromium
ungoogled-chromium 134 on Windows 10
Developer(s)Eloston and other hobbyists, collectively called "Ungoogled Software"[1][2]
Initial release14 December 2015; 10 years ago (2015-12-14)
Stable release
Website{{{1}}}

ungoogled-chromium is a free and open-source variant of the Chromium web browser that removes all Google-specific web services.[3][4][5] It achieves this with a series of patches applied to the Chromium codebase during the compilation process. The result is functionally similar to regular Chromium.[6][7]

Features

  • Disabling functionality that requires Google domains, including Google Safe Browsing.[8]
  • Replacing Google web domains with non-existent domains, and blocking internal requests to those domains.[8]
  • Removing binary blobs from the Chromium code and replacing them with custom alternatives.[8]
  • Adding dozens of flags to change browser behavior that is otherwise unconfigurable.[8]

Some features of regular Chromium do not work the same on ungoogled-chromium. For example, a special browser extension, called chromium-web-store, is required to install other extensions from the Chrome Web Store.[9]

History

The ungoogled-chromium project was founded by a hobbyist with the user name Eloston in 2015. It was first developed for Linux, then for other operating systems.[10][11] Eloston used to release builds, but eventually he stopped doing so and allowed others to provide builds with his patches.[12]

Starting in 2019, Eloston greatly reduced his involvement in the project, and other developers have continued to maintain the patches.[1] In 2022, the GitHub repository was transferred from Eloston's personal account to a new "ungoogled-software" account.[13]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Contributors to ungoogled-software/Ungoogled-chromium". https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/graphs/contributors. 
  2. "Download Ungoogled Chromium Binaries". https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/. 
  3. Cimpanu, Catalin (16 October 2016). "UnGoogled Chromium Removes All the Googley Parts from Chromium" (in english). https://news.softpedia.com/news/ungoogled-chromium-removes-all-the-googley-parts-from-chromium-509343.shtml. 
  4. Anderson, Tim. "When open source isn't enough: Fancy a de-Googled Chromium? How about some Microsoft-free VS Code?" (in en). https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/open_source_unbranded/. 
  5. Duino, Justin (2016-09-30). "'Ungoogled' is the Chrome browser you love minus the Google" (in en-US). https://9to5google.com/2016/09/30/ungoogled-is-the-chrome-browser-you-love-minus-the-google/. 
  6. Github Readme Objectives, ungoogled-software, 2022-10-04, https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium, retrieved 2022-10-04 
  7. "Ungoogled Chromium" (in en-US). https://www.techspot.com/downloads/7181-ungoogled-chromium.html. 
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 "GitHub Readme Feature Overview". https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium#feature-overview. 
  9. "chromium-web-store". https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store. 
  10. "Release 51.0.2704.106-2 · ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium" (in en). 2016-08-11. https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/releases/tag/51.0.2704.106-2. 
  11. "Release 51.0.2704.106-3 · ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium" (in en). 2016-09-03. https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/releases/tag/51.0.2704.106-3. 
  12. ungoogled-chromium-binaries, ungoogled-software, 2022-09-15, https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/blob/647b3171cb832714d3480f0f96ae890a89e0d336/README.md, retrieved 2022-10-04 
  13. "GitHub discussion". https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/discussions/1305#discussioncomment-2856521. "This repo is now part of ungoogled-software"