The Difference Between Chrome And Chromium

Chromium's kind of like Chrome's weird, artsy twin sister.

One thing I’ve noticed a lot of people run into – and that includes a considerable number of tech blogs (I’m looking at you, Business Insider)- is a tendency to confuse Chrome and Chromium.

And hey, I can’t really blame them for that. The two operating systems are rather strikingly similar. After all, one does happen to be built based on the other. Plus, the terms can sometimes be a little confusing. You’ve got Chrome the browser. You’ve got Chrome the OS. And you’ve got Chromium the…both?

And I suppose, to someone who doesn’t really know a great deal about Chrome, they do tend to look…pretty much the same.

Thing is, they really aren’t. Sort of. Mostly. Right, let’s set to work trying to differentiate the two, shall we?

Open Source Vs. Closed Source

The first (and greatest) difference between Chrome and Chromium is that Chromium is completely open source.

Google wanted to keep the code for their new brainchild under tight wraps, but they didn’t want to stifle the creativity of the open source community, either. Hence, Chromium was born. It’s pretty much modeled directly after Google’s Chrome OS. It’s basically the closest thing you can get to Chrome without actually running Chrome. That right there is basically the primary difference between Chrome and Chromium.

See, while only Google staff and programmers are allowed to touch the code for Chrome, anyone who cares to can fiddle and tinker with the coding for Chromium. The best known of these tinkerers is Liam Mcullough (otherwise known as “Hexxeh”), the guy who’s responsible for damn near every Chromium OS build out there.

New Features

Chrome's the sibling that gets all the attention

Here’s where a lot of people run into the greatest confusion. See, while Chromium isn’t Chrome, it does occasionally tend to be used as a sort of testing ground for new features in Chrome. A lot of the nifty functions you know and love in Chrome came to Chromium first. I suppose, in a sense, it’s something of a pre developer channel.

As a result, there are a lot of people who see an exciting new feature in Chromium, and report that Google’s working on an exciting new feature for Chrome. As you’re probably well aware, this isn’t always the case.

The Colors

...And Canary's the spastic one.

Okay, this might seem horrendously obvious to a lot of you, but…if it’s blue, it’s Chromium. If it’s red, green, blue, and yellow, it’s Chrome. And if it’s yellow, it’s Canary. Generally, the best way to tell if a build you’re looking at is Chrome or Chromium is to look at the color scheme. Granted, it’s not a foolproof method, but it works most of the time. If all else fails, look at the logo for the build. That should, ultimately, remove all doubt. If the logo’s blue, it’s definitely Chromium, definitely open source, and definitely not officially built by Google.

Being constructed by one of their staff doesn’t necessarily count.

That’s…pretty much it. Hopefully this cleared things up for all of you.

Image Credits: Google