Can confirm this; first noticed it when visiting http://ubuntuforums.org, which 
should be 99% sans-serif. Set Liberation fonts in preferences as the first image 
shows, and all of a sudden it's all nearly Serif.

I do *not* have Liberation set as default in any other application or GNOME 
preferences as DejaVu (or whatever default it is) looks better on the UI. Liberation 
in the browser would be nice, though, since some web pages will have a broken layout 
due to different sizes of DejaVu fonts.

From the source of the Ubuntu forums page:
	font: 12px Verdana, Arial, Tahoma;

So I guess it doesn't support free fonts at all, heh.  They must be relying on 
fontconfig to know how to fallback Arial into some other font.

Yes, I have tested it with a new firefox profile. firefox uses a serif font, too.
At www.ubuntuforums.org and on google.com -> News

See at screenshot, you must set as standart a sans font (in screenshot you see a
serif font by default)

Perhaps it's no bug in chromium.
I can set chromium analog to screenshot 2. Is it possible to set chromeium like
screenshot 1???

NOTE:
If you don't change chromiums font default, ubuntuforums(screenshot 3) uses a sans
font, and google.com -> News also uses a sans font (screenshot 4)

Font defaults: screenshot 5
Now, setting other font defaults. (screenshot 6)
Now both (ubuntuforums.org ang Google.com News) uses serif font's
(screenshot 7 and 8)

If I install Arial, ... it workts correct (I think because the most websites use
Arial, ...), If you don't change the font defaults (screenshot 5), chromium uses
perhaps sans or Dejavu sans . I'm not happy with this font, although it's a sans font

	Bildschirmfoto-Schriftarten.png 56.6 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Firefox-Einstellungen.png 62.8 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Ubuntu Forums - Chromium-1.png 167 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Fonts and Languages-1.png 37.3 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Fonts and Languages.png 35.8 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Ubuntu Forums - Chromium.png 159 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Google News - Chromium.png 400 KB View Download

	Bildschirmfoto-Google News - Chromium-1.png 401 KB View Download

Still, however, I don't believe we should be seeing serif fonts:

$ fc-match Veranda
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
$ fc-match Arial
LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular"
$ fc-match Tahoma
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"

I get this:

stefan@PC-30-SK-OG-3:~$ fc-match Verdana
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
stefan@PC-30-SK-OG-3:~$ fc-match Arial
n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"
stefan@PC-30-SK-OG-3:~$ fc-match Tahoma
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
stefan@PC-30-SK-OG-3:~$ 

NOTE: I have not installed Liberation at the moment
But why should chromium looks at fontconfig, when the  fons are setted in the
chromium settings????????????????

Stefan.Koch90: you have quickly found the crux of the matter; half the users demand we 
use fontconfig, while the other half are surprised that we do!

It's okay to use fontconfig if the user makes no different configuration in chrome,
but if the user make a different configuration in chrome chrome should follow these
font settings.

But something does not work correct, when chromium use a sans font while the settings
in the original state and if you change the settings, chromium uses then a serif font...

Just to confirm: news.google.com apparently also hardcodes Arial with no other option.

The Chrome settings are the settings to use when a site doesn't specify a font, so 
they're not used in cases like news.google.com and the ubuntu forums, which do specify 
fonts.

We should probably just fall back on fontconfig as a last option in those cases.

 Issue 40179  has been merged into this issue.

I'm not going to get to this bug before my leave.  As it is a font bug, I'll CC bashi in case he is interested.

This bug is really old. Still an issue?