Comment by kipkniskern
6 years ago
These are, however, changes to Chrome and not Chromium, right? Even with a move to Chromium, anyone/everyone is still going to be playing catch up to Google. Having an open source engine means next to nothing if Google plays these kinds of games, abusing its dominant position. Having Edge updates tied to OS updates seems to be more of a problem than EdgeHTML itself, unless there are other issues (and there probably are) in play.
Chrome and Chromium share the same engine, and for this stuff it is the engine that matters.
For now, at least. AOSP and Android "share the same engine", supposedly, but API footprint standardized in AOSP is getting drastically distanced from the API footprint moved behind Google Play Services and other proprietary bulkheads. The number of APKs that run on non-Google Play enabled AOSP builds has dwindled fast in the last few years. (Just ask Amazon.)
What's to stop "YouTube needs Genuine Chrome™ with Google Play® Support Services Installed"?
What's to stop that now?
They could throw up a check and have "Youtube requires Chrome XX.X with the Evil-DRM plugin enabled" live whenever they want. It's the relevant market forces and ecosystem.