Yes, it's not a problem. For now. There are so many software projects that depend on chromium for their basic functionality, and so many users that indirectly rely on chromium. It's hard to switch to an alternative if the need arises. So when Google inevitably turns chromium into a problem, you don't have enough time to switch, no matter how badly you want to.
It's time to preventatively switch to a project that's more reliable. Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need. It would take a lot of effort, but we'd be protecting ourselves from a pretty realistic scenario where Google just pushes through whatever they want.
What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did.
What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?
Oh interesting! Seems like a pretty specific requirement to have. Do you mind if I ask what you use those for?
As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage. It's not 100% effective, but if them making an effort to do the right thing pushes you away, you might be asking too much unfortunately. Building an entire browser takes a lot of energy and time, and Firefox seems like the kind of browser that's worth it in the long term.
"As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage"
And the thing is, that firefox itself is tracking you and sends that data home. Maybe look up what "studies" mean. But so far at least you can opt out of it, unlike with chrome.
Ah, I see what you mean. I'm personally not against this at all, since the Firefox devs need feedback on what's working and what isn't. But I completely understand that some people won't accept this.
Only thing I can't figure out is if this is opt-out or opt-in, because I might have mindlessly clicked yes on opting in during installation.
What you mean is telemetry, that is something seperately. And it is also enabled by default( and also annoys me, but less so).
But firefox studies means, (or can mean), that firefox will track you and sell that data to ad companies, if you "allow" it. Which everyone does, by default. This behavior from a "privacy orientated" company is close to a scam by me. Because a normal user who believes the privacy promise, won't know of, nor find these settings.
And apparently now there is a third setting(on Firefox mobile, but not on desktop), that at least openly tells you they share tracking data with a ad companies.
edit: ok, that is weirdly funny. "Adjust" the ad company firefox is apparently working together with, has a website, that does not really load in firefox at all, but only in chrome
If you have FF on mobile, take a look in the settings and look at "data collection" (or something alike, I have it as "Datenerhebung" in german")
There is a switch with "marketing data".
And as far as I understood, this thing came out of "Firefox studies". They branded it as experiments, but I have not seen a experiment not related to tracking. Most famously the Mr.Robo scandal, but that only gained visibility, because it was visible. Others just ran in the background. But you should be able to look, what kind of "studies" did run on your computer.
Most Chromium-forks are not interested at all (or do not have the resources, considering the tons of costs it has) into doing any core changes to fight against Google, only Vivaldi… all the others are either doing nothing or just PR bullshit.
If a feature is rolled out to 95% of users, then websites have to adapt. If you have a browser and are part of these remaining 5% you will be the one blamed by the users and by the websites. So there is no incentive to remove any hostile feature.
I get that, which is exactly why you don't want any one browser having just under 70% marketshare like Chrome. If there are multiple options for people to switch between, then they can switch to another one if their current browser does something they don't agree with.
If there isn't another option, you're stuck. We open ourselves up to horrific effects of browser monopolies like all the security issues that Microsoft didn't give a damn about back when internet explorer had a monopoly. It takes effort to switch to a different browser stack, like moving away from Chromium for example, but in the long term you do not want everyone stuck with only one option, because that will be even more costly.
