One of the reasons I decided to try Chromium was because I don't like how frequently Chrome connects to various Google servers for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, I've found that Chromium does this, too.
Immediately on startup it wants to connect to ssl.gstatic.com, www.l.google.com, and others. I've also noticed a bizarre nonsense-domain that Chrome and Chromium both connect to on startup. It seems to change now end then. Just now Chromium tried to connect to the domain "pychhwqfug". At first I thought this was some internal thing, but I tried to ping it and lo and behold, it resolved to an actual IP address (204.232.137.207). What is this, and why does it have such a cryptic name? The name of this domain changes (it's different in Chrome and Chromium right now, and I've noticed Chrome use different ones in the past), but it seems to always resolve to the same IP.
(account deleted)