What's the difference between Chrome and Chromium?

I see there's a lot of confusion about what is different in the apparently open-source Chromium project and the Google Chrome web browser, and also the upcoming Chrome OS, which will be free to download. Frankly, even I came to understand all that very recently.

See what it says? "...made possible by the Chromium open source project..."

If you have searched a lot, you may have seen that many people are using Chromium on Linux. If you are using Chrome on Linux, you may think: Hey, I'm running Chrome on Linux. What's wrong? Is the Linux version called Chromium? But mine says 'Chrome'!


I'm answering all your doubts. Well, Chromium, first of all is an open-source project that makes a web-browser. It's then modified by Google and rebranded to make Google Chrome. Google also modifies it to make the three versions of Chrome, stable, beta and dev and adds some of its own features to the open-source project.

If you use Chromium, you may find that many things are different, the browser looks similar, but it's blue. Also, you may find a couple of features that are not yet implemented in Chrome. But on the other hand, there may be bugs in this browser.

The Google Chrome OS, which is coming soon is also being made by the open-source community, and will later be modified by Chrome. Because it is open-source, we'll get it as a free download.

I hope that cleared out everyone's confusion about Chrome and Chromium.



By the way, if you tried out the Flow version of the Chromium OS, your flash drive has been ripped apart and is not working properly. If you remove the OS from it, you'll have problems. But here's a complete guide to fix it back to normal.

What's the difference between Chrome and Chromium?