One of the developers of the JavaScript platform Deno, who leads the JSR.io package directory, pointed out the discrimination in the Chromium browser engine related to providing Google services with additional functionality that is unavailable to other sites without the installation of a separate extension. This refers to the built-in extension hangout_services, which is active by default and does not appear in the lists of extensions operating in the browser.
The extension provides functions for obtaining information about CPU and GPU load in the context of individual tabs and the entire system, as well as memory usage. The API provided by the extension is open for requests only from the subdomains of 'google.com'. The extension is pre-installed in Chrome, various builds of Chromium, Microsoft Edge, Brave, and likely in other browsers based on the Chromium engine.
The provision of such a built-in extension is perceived as unfair competition and a violation of the principle of providing a unified API for all sites, as thanks to the extension, Google services gain a competitive advantage by having access to system operation information that is unavailable to services from other companies. For example, Google Meet can adjust its operation based on the user's system load, while Zoom and other services require an external extension to be installed with granted permissions (for Google services, such functionality is available out of the box).
The data provided by the extension is displayed in the meet.google.com service in the 'Troubleshooting' panel. To check for the hangout_services extension, you can search for the identifier 'nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome' in the resources.pak file that comes with Chrome, and to check for activity, you should open any site related to domain google.com, and send the extension a request from the console in the web developer tools: chrome.runtime.sendMessage(‘nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome’, {method: ‘cpu.getInfo’}, response => {console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));}); 
$ strings /opt/google/chrome/resources.pak | grep -A 10 'nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome' // Extension ID: nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome 'key': '….', 'name': 'Google Hangouts', // Note: Always update the version number when this file is updated. Chrome // triggers extension preferences update on the version increase. 'version': '1.3.21', 'manifest_version': 2, 'externally_connectable': { 'matches': [ 'https://*.google.com/*' ] }
Source: opennet.ru
