Google creates investment fund for browsers using Chromium

Google this Thursday (09) announced a new industry initiative to financially support other browsers that use Chromium as the basis for their own programs. The project is called Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers Since it contains an open source platform, it will be maintained by the Linux Foundation.

Investment fund will help Funding the development, improvement or maintenance of Chromium ecosystem projects — It is the existing infrastructure used by browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Opera, as well as Google Chrome. The first names confirmed to be part of the consortium were Meta, Microsoft and Opera.

In addition to financial assistance and close monitoring, the company also committed to: “Continue to invest heavily in shared infrastructure“the content of the project, what it includes”Have thousands of servers run millions of tests non-stopWe respond to countless bugs every day.”

In the statement regarding the launch of the fund, the company says: Was responsible for 94% of financial contributions to the Chromium project only in 2024. According to the memo, it does not intend to reduce this share, but “continues to invite others to invest more“.

A sign of Chrome’s future?

The initiative to fundraise for Chromium is just getting started, which doesn’t seem like a coincidence or luck, given that the browser infrastructure project has been around since 2008.

Probably Google develops an argument to prevent being forced to sell its Chrome division — One of the demands of the United States Department of Justice following the antitrust investigation.

According to the ongoing lawsuit, the giant will have to divest some units or make very advantageous deals that make it the default search engine in other browsers that are code-wise unrelated to it, such as Firefox and Safari.

“This job Represents billions of dollars of annual investment in maintenance costs alone before any new features, innovations or other business priorities are met,” the company said, emphasizing that this allows the presence of competitors in the market, including using Google’s own mechanisms.

With the creation of the fund there are two possibilities: project Might be enough to convince authorities that Chrome isn’t a monopoly or Google already Preparing to ensure Chromium continues to run independentlyMaybe even in another direction.

The hearing on the process will only take place in April 2025.