Comment 4 for bug 1868117

Revision history for this message
Kevin (the7thstranger) wrote :

Pretty much every incompatibility-related issue is solved by spoofing the user agent and removing the "snap Chromium/<version>" part, simply claiming to be normal Chrome. There is not really any point in differentiating between Chromium and Chrome, but it breaks many websites, and it's also a nasty feature for browser fingerprinting.

Identifying as Chromium will only annoy users and have them install the proprietary Chrome browser instead, so "Netflix works" and "they can join their meeting".

In order to work around such issues, Vivaldi has already decided to just use Chrome's user agent, because otherwise things broke for no obvious reasons:

https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/

Moreover, Google has decided to semi-deprecate user agents altogether in upcoming Chrome releases:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user-agent-strings-in-chrome/
https://9to5google.com/2020/01/14/google-deprecate-chrome-user-agent-string-privacy/

So with these upcoming changes in Chrome, can Chromium in Ubuntu please follow suit, and no longer differentiate from whatever string Google will use for Chrome?