Chrome Based Browsers

[Napiophelios]

I have been fiddling with every freakin variant of the chrome based browsers
From Dragon to GoogleChrome to Iron to ChromePlus;
...why does the original :Chromium seem to be the best and the fastest?

Are these others just promoting their brand names or what?

I understand ChromePlus,they have actually added user functions and other features
to set itself apart from the others and the original.
Even Iron to a minor degree pioneering the adblock has done the same.

But GoogleChrome and Comodo Dragon dont seem to be much
of an improvement or variation from the original other than the added feature
of spying on the user's info and usage.
Comodo claims added security with the DV certificate varifications
which alerts certain sites they arent as up to date as they need to be
but really just amounts to an annoyance from the user perspective.

Am I missing something or are the differences so subtle they are only visible to the "tech minded"?

[chadross]

Google Chrome & Chromium are the same product. Chromium is the open source product headed by Google and is where all the development occurs. Google Chrome is the end user product that Google markets and distributes.

The others take the Chromium code base and either strip out features they don't agree with (i.e. privacy concerns) or add minor functionality.

Personally I use Chromium builds because of the rapid development and access to the new features and bug fixes.

[Ruby]

Google Chrome & Chromium are the same product.

Not entirely true.

The others take the Chromium code base and either strip out features they don't agree with (i.e. privacy concerns) or add minor functionality.

From the Wikipedia (Chromium) page.

Chromium is the name given to the open source project and the browser source code released and maintained at http://www.chromium.org.
Google takes this source code and adds on the Google name and logo, an auto-updater system called GoogleUpdate,
an opt-in option for users to send Google their usage statistics and crash reports as well as RLZ-tracking which transmits
information in encoded form to Google, for example, when and where Chrome has been downloaded.

[webfork]

Part of the confusion is what's at the core of these browsers: WebKit/KHTML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit). This is a technology Chrome, Chromium, and Iron all use, as well as Safari and QtWeb. This technology contrasts Mozilla's (known as Gecko-based browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_%28layout_engine%29), also used in K-Meleon and Camino for Mac.

Generally:

• The trade-off is speed versus standards compliance and/or bells and whistles. Google adds its goodies, Apple adds theirs and things get slower. The raw code will always be the most optimized.
• Gecko-based browsers tend to view web pages clearer and better, but WebKit-based browsers are usually faster. Gecko is based on a lot of old Netscape code and isn't as optimized as WebKit, which was done more or less from scratch.

[carbonize]

Just to add that Gecko also renders the gui and not just the web pages.