Google launches a ‘neutral’ Chromium development fund

Jan 10, 2025 05:55 AM - 1 week ago 10510

Google is partnering pinch The Linux Foundation to motorboat an inaugural meant to “fund unfastened improvement and heighten projects” successful the Chromium ecosystem, according to an announcement connected Thursday. The fund, called Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers, is billed arsenic a “neutral” abstraction to support Chromium projects.

Google launched Chromium alongside its Chrome web browser successful 2008. It’s the open-source infrastructure that powers Chrome and galore different browsers built connected it, including Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Brave.

In summation to Google, location are already respective notable companies connected committee pinch the initiative, including Meta, Microsoft, and Opera. Microsoft said joining will thief “provide clear and unfastened governance that directs costs towards community-driven needs.”

Google’s contributions to Chromium.

Image: Google

Google besides highlighted the much than 100,000 commits it made to Chromium past year, arsenic good arsenic its efforts to “invest heavily” into the open-source project:

Google besides continues to put heavy successful the shared infrastructure of the Open Source task to ‘keep the lights on’, including having thousands of servers endlessly moving millions of tests, responding to hundreds of incoming bugs per day, ensuring the important ones get fixed, and perpetually investing successful codification wellness to support the full task maintainable.

The creation of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers inaugural comes months aft the US Department of Justice demanded that Google waste Chrome arsenic portion of its projected remedies pursuing the ruling that Google is simply a monopolist. In response, Google projected eliminating exclusive deals that make Google the default hunt motor connected web browsers for illustration Safari and Mozilla for 3 years.

Even if Google is attempting to show the DOJ really overmuch it contributes to Chromium, the creation of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers suggests the open-source task would still person backing without the company’s involvement.