Chromium

Chrome and Chromium are basically the same, except for some differences:

• Chrome includes licensed codecs for some proprietary media formats (AAC, H.264, and MP3)
• Chrome supports Adobe Flash (PPAPI) by default
• Google supports auto-updates unlike Chromium (but you can use a bash script or an addon for that)
  and maybe other things I'm not aware about.
  But, even if Chromium is open-source, it still sends lots of data to Google.

So, if you want to keep using a Chromium-based web browser and not use Mozilla Firefox or Waterfox, you should take a look at Iridium Browser or Ungoogled Chromium. Another good alternative is Brave.

Though open source, Chromium is still very much tied in with Google. For me, it's only real use is for watching YouTube. I can't justify using a Google product for anything else.

Chromium may look just like Chrome with a different icon and, for the most part, it is, but it's more geared towards "power users" and for open-source projects. The most significant differences are Chromium being less annoying with warnings (when using custom extensions for instance), it doesn't silently install any auto updaters and it has fewer user tracking features (no RLZ). And of course, you can modify it, but the codebase is so huge and complicated, it's most likely not worth it.

If you'd like to try it, I highly recommend downloading an unofficial build with all the auvio/video codecs built in from here: chromium.woolyss.com

Google will limit the capability of adblock extensions drastically especially for uBlock Origin with their manifest v3 which includes radical changes like 30k filter limit and disabling dynamic filters.
I will not recommend it anymore, it became an evil and and starting to become a considerable threat to open source world and security within privacy of users.

Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave and so much alternatives have all same feature sets and maybe even more. Like better developer tools and better extension support in Firefox, VPN and Turbo support in Opera, better theme customization in Vivaldi etc.

Google Chrome have become just a habit for most of users but its abilities are not greater than alternatives. They rely on it just like Internet Explorer relied it years ago.

I am using ubuntu 64bit (on my desktop) and 32bit (on my old laptop) and chromium works perfectly. With the package adobe-flashplugin flash works even at my 32bit system (really important since google stopped 32bit builds). It comes with chromium pdf reader plugin enabled by default (at least on ubuntu, I'm not sure about other distros). There is also the package chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra on Ubuntu for restricted codecs support (I'm guessing something similar will exist on other distros), so you have all the functionality that chrome has with the benefits of being an opensource project!!!

I personally like Chromium a bit more than I do Google Chrome or any of the other ones based off the Chromium source code, and since it doesn't come with all the propriety software Google loads into Chrome, it allows me to customise what I use to replace it, or if I need it at all.

Faster updates than Chrome, and it's open source. If you're a Linux user, then you should consider using Chromium. Windows and Mac users should stick with the main browser.

[Edited by shadomatrix, July 31]

On second thought, don't use Chromium. Use Iridium or Ungoogled chromium instead.

A nice project, browser and fuels for development of many remarkable projects

I consider him the best Internet-browser. It is opensource and free from Google Chrome.

Which leaves us undefended against google's vomit called ADS

That's a serious problem and a NO-GO to me. I stick with Firefox till they change their 'here-u-go-jerk-i-puke-in your-face' tactic.

Easiest way to try on Android (not every version supports it):
getChromium

Although it's fast at the beginning, it gets slow after a while.

The only different between this and Chrome is the icon. :P

Just kidding. But ignoring ideological issues about open-source and whatever, the differences between Chrome and Chromium are barely noticeable to a normal user. Featurewise, there isn't much discrepancy between the two. Chrome includes built-in support for MP3s and some other proprietary stuff, so certain Chrome extensions that require this support might not work on Chromium. Also, Chromium includes a couple of small extra features that are normally only available in the beta versions of Chrome. However, most of these extra features are "experimental features", so they're not even enabled by default-- you have to type about:flags into your address bar to activate them.

To sum it up: Chrome and Chromium have a few differences, but if you're a normal person, the biggest difference between the two will still be the color of the icon.

my favourite browser changed icon today (not sure if it's permanent, i'll edit accordingly) ref. http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/app/theme/chromium/product_logo_256.png?view=markup

Added OSX to the list of supported platforms. Don't know why it wasn't in there.