Google Chrome is one. Microsoft Edge is another. Brave and Opera too. Then it gets stranger: VS Code, Slack, Discord, Spotify's desktop app and WhatsApp Desktop are also built on the same foundation. That foundation is Chromium — the open-source browser engine Google released in 2008.

A browser is really two machines. The rendering engine (Chromium's is called Blink) turns HTML, CSS and JavaScript into the pixels you see. The JavaScript engine (called V8) runs the code. Chromium packages both, plus the window, tabs and networking, into a kit anyone can build on.

That is why so many desktop apps feel like websites — because they are. Frameworks like Electron take Chromium and let developers ship one web codebase as a Windows, Mac and Linux app at the same time. The trade-off is size and memory: every Electron app carries its own copy of a browser. The gain is speed of development, which is why startups and giants alike accept the deal.

Two browsers refused the kit. Firefox runs on its own engine, Gecko, and Safari on WebKit — which is actually Chromium's ancestor: Blink was forked from WebKit in 2013. So even the "different" browsers share family history.

Why does it matter? Because when one engine powers most of the web's windows, its decisions become the web's decisions — which features sites can use, how fast pages load, and what "works everywhere" means. Chromium being open source softens that power, but the concentration is real, and it is one of the most under-told stories in everyday tech.

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