Chrome is built on Chromium, an open-source web browser project. You can download and run Chromium as a standalone browser.
Chrome adds some important features on top of Chromium.
For example:
- Chrome adds proprietary software for decoding audio and video files, known as codecs.
- Chrome can report errors to its engineering team if the user permits.
- Chrome provides a number of user-agent features such as password management, shared history, bookmarks and more, using your Google Account.
- Chrome downloads updates automatically.
- Chrome implements Chrome DevTools for testing, debugging and experimenting right in the browser.
Chrome also goes through rigorous additional testing processes through its release channels. This includes Chrome Canary, Chrome Dev, Chrome Beta, and Chrome Stable.
To get an idea of just how much effort goes into building a browser, take a
look at the chrome://credits page. It currently lists over 500 technologies
and projects used by Chrome.
Check out a graphic representation of how resources are included in Chromium with Visualizing entire Chromium include graph.
Other browsers and Chromium
Chromium's codebase is used for more than just Google Chrome. The code is the basis of many other browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, Arc, Android WebView, Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera.
Next steps
Read about Blink, which serves as the rendering engine for Chromium-based browsers.