Google Chrome and a conspiracy theory
I just found out that Chromium (browser) has been in Debian experimental and Sid for a while.
I'm currently tracking Squeeze and pulling some packages from Experimental, in particular Iceweasel 3.6, which feels much more stable to me than its counterpart in Testing, version 3.5 — which will probably have to remain in the upcoming Stable release as explained by one of the package maintainers.
(Granted, I'm a fool who doesn't care about security because I don't visit unknown odd sites at all. If it weren't for this, you'd say I should not be pulling packages from Experimental, but I am, fully understanding the risks!)
Despite I can see other packages from Experimental in my package manager, including a localization package for Chromium, I can't see Chromium itself, which is really odd. I have Google Chrome installed and I pull it from Google's repository because…because it added itself to apt's sources after I installed it for trying it out last year — which unfortunately reeks of Internet Explorer's old “integration” thing that started with IE 4, frankly. I mean, why didn't it even ask me about adding the source? Is it modifying other parts of my system's configuration without my consent? What the hell, Google?
Rant aside, this is a strange coincidence, which could be related to a mirroring issue in any case, but I don't rule out the possibility that Chrome is somehow banning Chromium from my package manager. Alternatively my laptop might be possessed by some evil spirit that wants me to leave Debian's free-as-in-freedom packages for evil “Big Brother” software suites. Uncanny?
*(For the Google lovers and haters in the audience: I'm perfectly fine with using Google stuff, mind you. My main email account is from Gmail, my preferred search engine is Google's, I also use Google Maps, Google Earth, and this memory/method call profiling suite of sorts that Sirp recommended to me. I also use Google Translate and reCAPTCHA. So, no, I'm not really bothered by Google Chrome's additions, but I'm really mildly pissed off at their decision to change my package manager's sources without asking me through debconf or something.)