A really excellent and rather bold idea. I doubt Google very much approves of it...
If you haven't run into the Slimjet browser before, you're in the majority. The world of web browsers delves deep into many enclaves - some of which are tiny, and highly specialised. Slimjet is actually big compared with some of the really obscure browsers, but it's still not a mainstream name.
In this post I'm going to explain why you should try Slimjet. If you like Chrome, but want something more orientated towards privacy, Slimjet could prove a great choice.
But before I go further, I should stress that there are a couple of conditions to this. One, YOU NEED TO SWITCH OFF EVERYTHING IN THE "SYNC AND GOOGLE SERVICES" TAB. And two, you need to run the Chromium NULL trick to disable data harvesting by the Omnibox search engine. Once you've done that, Slimjet has the makings of a great browsing regime.
THE ROOTS OF SLIMJET
The Chromium-derived flagship Slimjet is really a replacement lead product in the FlashPeak range. It's taken over from FlashPeak's old Windows browser, which caused waves of excitement in the early 2000s, but lost its "slinkmeister" niche when the original, superfast Google Chrome hit the scene in 2008. It was called SlimBrowser, and it's still available, although it's now definitely playing second fiddle to Slimjet.
SlimBrowser came along in 2002 as a streamlined embodiment of Internet Explorer. It wasn't a copy of IE - it used and session-modded the actual IE nucleus. So Internet Explorer (minimum Version 4) had to be installed in order for SlimBrowser to run. SB did, however, pare down the weight of IE and it added some extra features. An auto popup blocker and a site filter for example. And it had 34 selectable search engines on its search bar (I kid you not) - including Altavista, Xuppa, Gigablast, Lycos and WiseNut.
But the original SlimBrowser was probably best remembered for its ability to load numerous pages in tabs, without excessive memory drain. The value of that was phenomenal back in 2002, when 256MB was the standard RAM offering, and some PCs still came with 128.
Slimjet was a much later development. Forked from Chromium, it appeared as a beta version in 2014 - seemingly inspired by Opera's switch to the Chromium framework the previous year. Like SlimBrowser, Slimjet has remained fairly obscure in the mainstream. A shame, because Slimjet is one of the best browsers on the current scene, coming with features like HTML5 canvas-blocking and ad-blocking pre-integrated. You just have to approve them and/or switch them on.
Whereas Opera ultimately took the "goodie-bag" route, Slimjet instead took a more privacy-conscious approach. And Slimjet has some really nice privacy tools buried amid its extensive haven of toggle switches.
One excellent feature, hidden deep in the Privacy settings, is labelled "Replace indirect link in search engine results with direct link to original site". A lot of people don't see the implications of this, but it's a cracking inclusion.
Ordinarily, when you use Google and click on a search result, you don't go directly to the site. Google's search result links actually go to Google, and they contain tracking information - which can be passed on to the destination site when Google performs the indirect referral.
For example, when you visit a site via Google search, the destination site's administrator may see the search term you entered. That's even more likely still on Bing.
"Private search engines" like DuckDuckGo instead link their organic results directly to the original site. Bing often does too, but unlike DDG it can attach a tale-telling tail to the URL.
With indirect links like those on Google, the two-step referral happens so quickly that most users won't see it. The best way to catch it in action is to search with Google, then disconnect your Internet, then click a link in the results. Because there's now no web access for Google to do its jiggery-pokery, the dead page left in the address bar is actually a Google page rather than your intended destination.
But if you engage Slimjet's direct link feature and do the same thing, you'll find those search results now go to your intended destination page rather than Google. If you're into privacy, this is a fantastic protection. You're not really hiding much from Google, but you could be hiding a lot from the sites you ultimately visit. A really excellent and rather bold idea. I doubt Google very much approves of it.
You have to dig into the More tab within Privacy and Security to find this toggle under "Tracking prevention options", and there are some other hardline tracker-zappers in there too. For example…
"Block social network JavaScript on third-party websites."
"Block Google ads on third-party websites."
The latter is entirely separate from the regular ad-blocking, I should say. FlashPeak are clearly not afraid to upset the biggest powers on the web.
The ad-blocker comes with EasyList pre-loaded. I'd suggest that's not enough on its own, and that you need to add EasyPrivacy as well. The simple way to achieve that is to visit the EasyList site, and add EasyPrivacy to Slimjet's ad-blocker by clicking the "add it to your ad blocker" link on the homepage I've linked to. You don't then need to go to the Chrome Store, but make sure your ad-blocker is running first, obviously.
EasyPrivacy blocks trackers who are not directly advertising, but who definitely are mining your data. And it'll take down Google Tag Manager, whereas EasyList - purely an ad-blocking list - won't.
But Slimjet is not only about privacy. It takes accessibility further, with a native means to invert the web page colours. And there's a photo-processing routine that lets you limit the size of your image uploads. When it's switched on, a maximum dimension of your choice becomes a strict upper limit. It's great for those who often work with multiple image sizes, but don't want to accidentally upload their hi-res stuff to free locations. Obviously helps keep bandwidth under control too - if you're uploading a whole folder of pics.
Slimjet is also fully compatible with the Chrome Store, so you have a very wide range of add-ons at your fingertips.
Then there's the "Save as PDF"… feature, which lets you convert a web page to a PDF file for permanent, offline preservation. This is useful now that so many web pages are composed wholly of JavaScript and will not reproduce when saved as HTML. The formatting as saved is not perfect (nature of JavaScript aesthetics, unfortunately), but something is better than nothing, and I imagine a lot of people would find this very beneficial indeed for offline study.
Although Slimjet is not as great a potential privacy fortress as Brave, and it does phone Google, if you add the EasyPrivacy block list, set up JavaScript and cookie exceptions, activate the HTML5 canvas blocker, keep Safebrowsing, spell-checking and DNS disabled, and SHUT OFF THAT GOOGLE SYNC, it can function well as a regular, non-incognito browser.
Slimjet packs a lot of punch. Red alert caution on the Google Sync, but step around that and it's definitely worth a try.