Isn't Chromium exactly Chrome minus Google extras? I was under the impression that the difference between the two was exactly said Google-specific features that were apparently only cut off now.
Its chrome without the closed source bits. The syncing part was open source I guess but required an API key. I wonder if they could in theory just grab the key from chrome.
Well depends on your definition of open source. Most of the code for the sync, as well as these other internal APIs, is on Google's backend and is very much closed source. The thin client code calling these APIs may have been in Chromium, but as a general rule of thumb, I wouldn't really call Google Translate and Sync open source.
Google provides the code for Chromium, but I'm not sure why there's an expectation that they should also freely provide internal APIs which require backend servers. What other open source software provides such guarantees?
> I wonder if they could in theory just grab the key from chrome
I saw some discussion of that in the discussion group. I believe it would break their terms and services for distros to do it, not sure if an individual could on their own though.
