Chromium Blog
blog.chromium.org · Company blog · on HN since 2008
The Chromium Blog is Google's official channel for Chrome and Chromium news on extensions, privacy, performance, and web platform changes.
What HN saysHN links it for policy announcements, such as the extension obfuscation ban, third-party cookie plans, and discontinued features like RSS following.
685HN people shared it
397linked it in comments
688stories submitted
19Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1From Chrome Apps to the Web17 people · 196 points · first shared 2016 · 104 comments on HN
- 2Web Request and Declarative Net Request: Explaining the impact on Extensions15 people · 52 points · first shared 2019 · 43 comments on HN
- 3Trustworthy Chrome Extensions, by default10 people · 154 points · first shared 2018 · 74 comments on HN
- 4WebAssembly brings Google Earth to more browsers10 people · 11 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 5Building a more private web: A path towards making third party cookies obsolete9 people · 287 points · first shared 2020 · 200 comments on HN
- 6A new compression algorithm to make Google Chrome updates small9 people · 106 points · first shared 2009 · 25 comments on HN
- 7Experimenting with QUIC9 people · 102 points · first shared 2013 · 13 comments on HN
- 8Expanding user protections on the web9 people · 16 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 9Irregexp, Google Chrome's New Regexp Implementation9 people · 8 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 10New Chromium security features9 people · 6 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 11A Tale of Two Pwnies (Part 1)8 people · 259 points · first shared 2012 · 78 comments on HN
- 12Protecting Windows users from malicious extensions8 people · 8 points · first shared 2013 · 2 comments on HN
- 13Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project7 people · 729 points · first shared 2013 · 304 comments on HN
- 14Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly7 people · 725 points · first shared 2017 · 343 comments on HN
- 15Manifest V2 phase-out begins7 people · 106 points · first shared 2024 · 83 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Kalabasa · 2026-07-20
Chrome mobile used to have a native RSS Following feature since 2021.
https://blog.chromium.org/2021/05/an-experiment-in-helping-users-and-w…
It seems they killed it in 2025, maybe to make space for the AI button.
esprehn · 2025-12-29
In something like a database zeroing or poisoning on free is probably a good idea. (These days probably all allocators should do it by default.)
Allocators are an interesting place to focus on for security. Chris did amazing work there for Blink that eventually rolled out to all of Chromium. The docs are a fun read.
https://blog.chromium.org/2021/04/efficient-and-safe-allocations-every…
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/base/allocator…
cj · 2025-12-16
Obfuscation is banned. Minification is not.
https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-def…
btown · 2025-09-05
Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34547259
This is really, really cool!
Skia is a incredible abstraction layer. The linked article at the top of the OP https://fathy.fr/html2svg (2022) has some great graphics of how Skia can support various backends including PDF rendering (via https://skia.org/docs/user/sample/pdf/).
It's also worth noting that the Chrome Graphics team is writing yet another Skia rasterization backend, just announced last month: https://blog.chromium.org/2025/07/introducing-skia-graphite-chromes.ht…
Given that this article came out a couple years ago, it's quite possible that it was seen by the Chrome team and inspired them to look at making a new backend from scratch!
mplewis9z · 2024-08-17
Yep, that's the approach being taken by companies like Cloudflare[^cloudflare] and Google[^google], but notably the NSA recommends _against_ that approach[^nsa] (though the cybersecurity community at large thinks that may be because using hybrids now is disadvantageous to them breaking communications in the future).
[^cloudflare]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-for-all/
[^google]: https://blog.chromium.org/2023/08/protecting-chrome-traffic-with-hybri…
[^nsa]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38844117
refulgentis · 2024-07-05
Hmm, that doesn't sound right to my ear.
They've loudly assumed it is possible.
c.f. Their focus has been on incentivizing private actors to do post-quantum algorithms, yesterday.
c.f. most recently, https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/advancing-our-amazing-bet-on-asymmet…
Do you have more info on why they'd ban import of it? Seems like an obviously wrong strategy to combat it.
gpm · 2024-05-31
It "works" on chrome, but it works best on firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Fir…
And google keeps threatening to make it not work at all on Chrome. Most recently, yesterday [1], with warning banners harassing users supposedly rolling out on Monday.
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/manifest-v2-phase-out-begins.html?m=…
sebazzz · 2024-05-31
Subtle reminder that ManifestV2 phase out now has a timeline at Chrome[0]. The best moment to switch to Firefox is now.
[0]: https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/manifest-v2-phase-out-begins.html
sparrish · 2023-11-17
They've been saying this since 2018. I'll believe it when I see it.
https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-def…
mauricesvp · 2023-08-22
For some time now I've been getting videos recommended with barely any views (often <100), which are basically completely random.
I wrote this simple extension[0] that removes those videos from the main page, as well as on the sidebar of video pages. The limit is set to below 100 by default, however this can be adjusted. The source code[1] is available as well.
I'm not planning on releasing the Extension for Chrome, since you can't do that for free[2].
---
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/low-go/
[1] https://github.com/mauricesvp/low-go
[2] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/03/new-developer-dashboard-and.html
eddythompson80 · 2023-06-24
> I have to imagine that some rogue engineeers snuck that functionality in over a decade ago and that it's simply escaped the notice of any PMs or bean counters since then.
Nothing really rouge about it. Google was big on RSS initially as a way to subscribe to content across the web. They had their own RSS Reader after all.
Yet, Chrome added an experimental "Follow" feature in 2021 for RSS subscriptions [1]. Edge did the same calling it "Follow Creators" that mostly focuses on YouTube but also uses RSS [2].
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2021/05/an-experiment-in-helping-users-and-w…
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/17/22887626/microsoft-edge-youtube-int…
World177 · 2023-02-22
Google blocks ads from their competitors. [1] In the article, they state it’s because those companies are not following their standard, and are using too many resources. (Which they claim negatively impact device performance through metrics like battery performance)
In comparison, Microsoft implied in their advertisement that their browser is safer than Google’s because it has the “trust of Microsoft.”
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html
sfifs · 2023-01-15
I believed in stuff built on top of browser platform too and had written something useful for me and it turns out a few dozen more people through the Chrome store. Then Google for some ideological reason related to PWAs killed the Chrome Apps platform and all of a sudden, a great way to distribute functionality just disappeared.
https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/moving-forward-from-chrome-apps.html…
Apparently it is now alive-ish (there seem to be a set of follow up announcements) but was burnt.
crazygringo · 2022-10-26
It definitely does have release notes.
The top of the Chromium blog [1] currently says "Find the release notes for Chrome Beta 107 here." and they point to [2].
Which is definitly not marketing treatment -- it's deep in the weeds of changes for CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and so forth.
It's obviously not including every change made, but it does seem like it's intending to be fairly comprehensive in terms of new relevant changes for developers.
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/
[2] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-107-beta/
eklitzke · 2022-03-29
I haven't followed exactly where they landed on this but both Firefox and Chrome have been testing user-agent strings with version 100+ for a while, and have (or at least had) a fall back mechanism to present the version as 99.xxx where the xxx contains additional information with the true browser version. There's also a longer term plan to phase out User-Agent headers as they exist now, more details at https://blog.chromium.org/2022/03/chrome-100-beta-reduced-user-agent.h…
sradman · 2021-02-05
This article details the decisions of whether to include Chromium in several Linux distributions following Google’s announcement that it will be Limiting Private API availability in Chromium:
https://blog.chromium.org/2021/01/limiting-private-api-availability-in…
elithrar · 2021-01-30
Yep: YouTube currently delivers over gQUIC and h3 (IETF QUIC).
We advertise the following alt-svc for most devices:
> h3-29=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-T051=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q050=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q046=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=":443"; ma=2592000,quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43"
HTTP/3 (over IETF QUIC) is still not as widely deployed due to lesser client support, but that's growing as both Chrome[1], Firefox and Apple (in iOS Safari, when enabled) adopt it and the latest drafts.
[1]: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/10/chrome-is-deploying-http3-and-ietf-q…
missblit · 2020-09-08
That's an argument for disabling large GIF autoplay or tying it to the autoplay setting, not for removing the autoplay setting entirely!
Though I guess in the extreme case a webpage could have a huge grid of 1x1px divs that change color in a requestAnimationFrame callback based on data retrieved over XHR.
So I can kinda see their point of view. It still seems a bit too far in the other direction if you ask me though.
... But enough grumbling. I wanted to point out the following documents for more context:
https://blog.chromium.org/2017/09/unified-autoplay.html (Somewhat wordsmithed...)
https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/audio-video/autoplay
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EH7qZatVnTXsBGvQc_53R97Z0xqm6zRblK…
wp381640 · 2019-11-21
I pulled the Honey extension a while ago to poke through it in order to better understand it and the first interesting thing I found is that despite the Google order that they'll no longer allow obfuscated Chrome extensions[0] the Honey extension is still - a year later - a large 2MB+ Javascript blob (webpack compiled and minified) [1]
I've been meaning to go back into it to figure out what exactly they're doing but never found the time
$4B cash on an extension that is at the mercy of Google and it's ever-changing rules and sporadic enforcement seems a risk
[0] https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-def…
[1] https://robwu.nl/crxviewer/?crx=https%3A%2F%2Fchrome.google.com%2Fwebs…
SquareWheel · 2019-10-12
It's an older rule[1]. It does technically apply here, but it's not a great look that they're only enforcing it now.
If Gorhill needed to, some of that extra functionality could be moved out into a separate extension. uBlock has done this before with uBlock Origin Extra[2]. Most of the extra features (eg. remote font blocking) aren't a huge deal, in my opinion.
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2013/12/keeping-chrome-extensions-simple.htm…
[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-extra/pgdnlhfe…
geofft · 2019-01-06
Whoa, I totally missed that! https://blog.chromium.org/2016/06/universal-rendering-with-swiftshader… So is it the case that you get decent (though perhaps not great) WebGL performance even if you have no GL-compatible graphics driver at all?
Then are Nouveau users only losing performance and not functionality as a result of this Google decision?
alexanderby · 2018-12-04
Firefox add-ons pass full source code review before the submission after the Stylish incident. Safari extensions also pass manual review, Apple asks developer to send an ID card photo. Not sure about Chrome, you have to simply trust me, the code is not obfuscated and you can always locate the files and see what the extension does in your browser. Google recently announced some security changes https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-def…
gildas · 2018-11-22
I really did my best to minimize the APIs used by the extension. Note that Chrome 70 allows you to restrict extensions by host [1].
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-def…
dartf · 2018-11-02
That's actually coming soon: https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-def…
chipperyman573 · 2018-05-29
BTW I've had the same problem, the solution is to just click it twice (once to "pause" it and once to unpause it). For what it's worth I've only gotten this problem since chrome released their update that disables autoplay (https://blog.chromium.org/2018/03/chrome-66-beta-css-typed-object-mode…
I think the black box just means that the first frame is black
mcbits · 2017-05-04
Chrome apps are being discontinued on most OSes, so they recommend migrating to Electron or NW.js if a normal web app or extension won't work. https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html
dalore · 2017-02-10
You know he actually does have his own blog: https://addyosmani.com/blog/
As well as several blog like posts at google plus https://plus.google.com/+AddyOsmani
There are numerous official google blogs like the chromium blog https://blog.chromium.org/
As to why he chose medium over his existing blogs only he can tell you. My guess would be that he is using Medium to reach a bigger audience.
The confusing thing is when he he says we and us (talking about his team) it's confusing since it's on Medium. This really should be up on the Google dev blogs if it's official.
owencm · 2015-06-23
We try and make sure that the Chromium blog (http://blog.chromium.org/) always covers new features as they make it into the new Beta. Imho you should be able to read the beta blog posts on that blog and not miss any new developer shiny things. Also fwiw we're going to try and do a better job of making the release notes link to the appropriate beta blog post on the Chromium blog, I agree we've done a poor job on that in the past.
snowwrestler · 2015-04-16
I came back to reply to myself that there is now a Content Security Policy header to deal with this exact situation:
https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/upgrade/
It is included in the Chrome 43 beta [1], and Firefox is working on it as well [2]. This is excellent news for folks looking to upgrade existing sites to HTTPS.
[1] http://blog.chromium.org/2015/04/chrome-43-beta-web-midi-and-upgrading…
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1139297
malkia · 2015-02-13
Wow! Hold right there. Chrome uses shared memory among it's spawned processes on all operating systems.
If you use Task Manager (Windows) / Activity Monitor (OSX) or something similar in Linux, you would see memory over-reported.
Google for this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+"shared+memory"
Some info:
http://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-backgrounder
Some more info:
http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-usage-good-and-b…
Best tool to see the memory usage is chrome itself: about://memory -> check the real sum at the end of the page.