Google said that alternative Chromium-based browsers are using its infrastructure and abusing Chrome Sync to store their users' data, bookmarks and browsing history on Google's servers without permission. The discovery, according to the search giant, was made during a recent audit.

To prevent future abuse, Google said it plans to limit some of the APIs features Chrome includes in Chromium starting March 15, 2021, making them unavailable to any third-party open source browsers.

This will not only affect Chrome Sync, but also features like spell checker, contacts, translation, and so on. All of these APIs are implemented in the Chromium source code, the open source framework that underpins the Chrome browser.

Later in the year it is expected that Google will make closed and private few more parts. Whole browser code will go into closed source around 2023.