Google restricts certain Chrome features in third-party Chromium browsers

Starting March 15, Google will restrict access to sync, click-to-call and other API functions in third-party Chromium browsers. According to Google, it was never intended for users to be able to use those features outside of the official Chrome browser.

Google said in a blog post that in a recent audit, it found that some third-party Chromium browsers could take advantage of features like sync and click-to-call. Both are only intended for use in Chrome, according to Google.

The company added that the data users had synced through Chromium browsers will remain accessible in their Google Accounts and can therefore be reused if they start using Chrome instead of a third-party Chromium browser. Locally stored data also remains locally stored.

Google doesn’t say which Chromium browsers had access to and use of the features, but Google does say that a “small proportion of Chromium users” could log in with their Google account in a third-party browser and store and share sync data with Chromium browsers. That indicates that it is probably not about large Chromium browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi. In addition to sync and click-to-call, Google also does not mention which other API functions are involved, but it may be features for spelling, remote desktop and the calendar, writes Ghacks.net. That website lists more than 20 Google APIs from a Chromium developer page that are not available by default in the browser.