I think the Firefox settings now call it the address bar when selecting if you want it to do both functions or have separate boxes. It may still be that internally.
Also I just looked it up and apparently I was wrong anyways and the Chrome internal docs call it the omnibox actually...
And the chromium developers blog calls it the address bar...
And so does The Keyword (blog.google)...
I think they've both given up on getting the public to use their special names now that it's just an expected feature of a browser.
Are you talking about the "Make Chrome your own" page that walks you through a few customization options before asking if you want to sign in? You can just select "No thanks" and you're not signed in. Incognito windows work just fine.
Or are you talking about the "Set up your new Chrome profile" screen that pops up when you make a new profile? It shows two options: Sign in [to Google] and "Continue without an account". "Continue without an account" just has you name the new profile to distinguish it from any others you may have and then lets you start using it. Incognito windows work just fine.
They have forked it though? That's why almost all the other Chromium-based ones don't have this enabled by default or completely disable it (even if you tried to turn it on).
If you're talking about forking the entire project and using it as a base that diverges from what Google does, I don't think that's going to happen. Not even Microsoft with their billions had the desire to maintain a totally separate engine anymore and I don't see the other Chromium-based browsers redirecting efforts from useful things like better UIs, privacy enhancements, etc into just keeping feature/performance parity.
The bar at the top of the browser that acts as both a place to enter addresses and enter searches. It's not strictly an address bar nor a search bar. It's both. It's all. It's omni.
While Signal does use Google's notification system, my understanding is that they just use it as a way to wake up the app on the phone and have it check for new messages rather than sending any message content this way. The notification system that the operating system provides on the phone would still have access to the message data in the locally generated message notification with the actual content however, along with any apps that you give access to your notifications.
Notification management: Adds action buttons to notifications. For example, the action buttons could add directions to a place, help you track a package, or add a contact.
For this feature though they've tried to select the topics to be ones that "[do] not include sensitive categories (i.e. race, sexual orientation, religion, etc.)". The list is also public and gambling is not on it:
While this won't satisfy those who want no individualized ads or no ads at all, it would be an improvement over what we have now and put control over what topics are used (or even if it's enabled at all) in the local browser instead of some server online.
Isn't this client-side solution for analyzing the history and coming up with ad topics for sites better in your scenario than the server-side solutions currently in use though? A government would have a much harder time trying to get access to the data when it's on each individual's device, rather than a profile created through an online ad service.
The law can come into effect whenever they want it to and the sites need to have their filtering systems ready and tested before that happens for them to be effective:
Supposedly Shreddit uses the archive of your data that you can request from Reddit to delete the stuff that isn't currently viewable but I haven't tried it first-hand (costs money). If you could feed the archive data into one of the other scripts mentioned in the comments here somehow, that would probably be the most thorough option, assuming you don't hit an API rate limit.
That's one of my main problems with Microsoft at this point. They can make improvements to the underlying technologies (WSL, better security sandboxing, FDE by default on supported hardware, etc) and develop actually decent software (Edge) but then they keep doing things to piss off the users like forced online account logins, the mess they made of the default app selection going from 10 to 11, pre-installed junk, and now this. They just need to get out of their own way and focus on making decent products: ones people want to use, instead of ones they're coerced to use.
I don't really fault them for getting their filtering/blocking systems setup and tested ahead of time before they are liable, considering the estimated cost of $329.2 million per year between Google and Meta:
Application
6 This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses:
(a) the size of the intermediary or the operator;
(b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and
c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position.
What is Bill C-18?
Bill C-18 is legislation that would force tech companies such as Google and Meta to negotiate compensation deals with news organizations for posting or linking to their work.
Here's Microsoft's information page on it:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/modern-standby