[Article author here] A few notes:
1. I tested with many different sites and configurations in order to narrow down the issue. The screenshots in the article are just a small sample of my tests, for illustration.
2. I'm not logged into Chrome or any Google services. I've gone through chrome://settings and disabled everything Google-related. Nonetheless, although I'm not using those Chrome features, this issue obviously could be related to the existence of those features in Chrome.
3. My goal in publishing the article was to get the issue fixed ASAP. I'm a browser extension developer, so I'm constantly testing with different browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It wasn't my intention to start a browser war.
4. I believe that Chrome is entirely open source, so I hope that someone familiar with the code base will take a look at this issue. The sheer size and complexity makes it a bit daunting for an outsider, but since Chromium has been adopted by other browsers such as Brave and Edge, there are outside developers already working on it.
4. Chromium is open-source, while Chrome is not.
Hmm. It seems to be mostly open source though? I found a document about differences on Linux, and I didn't see much. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...
Chromium is the open source bit, Chrome is Chromium plus a bunch of proprietary changes that google adds. You can run Chromium- it is a browser by itself- but it's not the same thing you'd download and run if you grab Chrome.
TIL. Are there any downsides to running Chromium instead of Chrome?
Chromium has no auto-updater on Windows and macOS. Unless you have a package manager that compiles updated versions for you, you're better off using Chrome.
I use Firefox. But, I'd be willing to install a version of Chrome if it came without all of the Google garbage pre-installed. I was hoping that maybe Chromium could fill this role.