Is there yet an actually trustworthy "un-Googled" Chrome/Chromium?

Question

1. Google Chrome is now the de facto supported browser, just like Internet Explorer 6 was for many years.
2. Google Chrome is made by Google and so full of spying that it's not even funny.
3. Google provides a "Chromium" project which is implied to be "Chrome without the Google stuff", but I have personally verified that it's actually still full of Google spying.
4. There are countless shady scams such as "Brave Browser", simply using Chromium and adding their own spying on top of it. I want nothing to do with that.
5. I am aware of Vivaldi, made by the old Opera guys. However, I find even this Chromium-based browser to be very shady and full of unwanted junk and dependencies on Google services, etc. I do run it, but only for emergencies and in an isolated VM. So it's not practical at all.
6. I know of ungoogled-chromium, which at first glance sounds like exactly what I want. But then you read this on their website ( https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/ ):

IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are willing to build and submit them. Because these binaries are not necessarily reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed.

There is simply no way that I could possibly trust such a project, where "anyone" is free to provide executables for Windows.

I am looking for a truly privacy-focused, non-profit, power-user-focused, no-nonsense project which uses the Chromium tech/engine as its base, but has truly removed everything related to Google from it, and has no spying on its own.

PS: Yes, I'm aware of Firefox, the only (non-Mac-only) alternative browser left. Sadly, it's just as bad as Chrome. I use Pale Moon, a Firefox fork, but it's so incredibly slow as to be a complete nightmare to use for anything but my own web pages. Seriously. It takes many seconds per page load for most major websites.

Answer 1

vivaldi claims no google function inclusions. You can set the search engine to duck-duck-go and avoid google and beeg search engines. Vivaldi allows optional inclusion of chrome extensions. This makes for lots of choices for easily increasing functionality. If you think google spies are embedded in extensions you do not have to install any of them. I have a few extns installed. They are 3rd party. Thus, i see no reason for excluding vivaldi from your list. I would like to know specifics on it's shadiness and inclusion of google services

Historically, chromium was an original opensource browser. google freely took it and added their google junk into it and renamed it as google chrome. Chromium was always reported free of spy stuff. Of course, chrome is not.

The original opensource chromium is still available. Recently though a change was made that reduced it's functionaly in some way. I am not familiar with the details but it is still opensourced and free of interveeners. unless you don't believe vivaldi's claims.

You might reinvestigate brave browser. I liked much about it re: anonymity, tracking, adfs, etc. I was all in and I was going to participate in brave rewards until it was requested that I send my picture ID on the internet to some cybercurrency firm. That's is a no-no for me and I dumped brave. I did not dump it for shadiness and scams. Again, I would like to know of specifics in brave for your shadiness and scam claims.

Answer 2

I have been using Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com). I find it fully the equivalent of chrome. Builtin no-ads, builtin no-trackers. I too wished to get the spying behind me. Have a try. I am running linux but it is for windows also.

tom kosvic