
Chrome to become the standard browser on Android 4.0 and above - Garbage
http://androidandme.com/2012/02/applications/goodbye-old-browser-chrome-to-become-the-standard-browser-on-android-4-0-and-above/
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rplnt
This is really bad news for Opera. Although they probably won't leave their
1st position in mobile browser market anytime soon, they will feel it. Even
more so if Google will throw billions on advertising as it did with desktop
version and people with older androids will switch too.

And this will deepen the new IE5+ era which came with* Chrome. Remember those
sites which blocked you when you had other browser than IE? Now try to use
some non-mainstream browser for a while and you will notice them again. Some
might be subtle, just silently blocking features/redirecting you to other
versions of sites. But it is the same nevertheless. (And no, I'm not talking
about about various tech demos which really only work in Chrome.)

*edit: brought by -> came with

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chime
> And this will deepen the new IE5+ era which was brought by Chrome. Remember
> those sites which blocked you when you had other browser than IE? Now try
> not to use Chrome for a while and you will notice them again.

The big difference is that Chromium is open-source while IE was not. Also
Chrome devs work with Mozilla and others to create new features, unlike IE vs
Netscape at the time.

~~~
ootachi
Recently Google has shown little interest in working with others; witness Dart
(which essentially nobody but Google wants) and NaCl (which no other browser
manufacturer wants).

~~~
nkassis
Sorry but I don't see that as them not showing interest in working with others
at all. There is a NaCL plugin for firefox written by Google, in both case the
specs a open and the code in WebKit is open source. They can't force others
into using their stuff. They've been proactive in taking in Firefox's new tech
like WebGL and they killed their own effort (O3D) in the process(I depended on
O3D for one of my work projects but they did make the transition pretty
painless by rewritting O3D's api on top of WebGL). There are many more
examples.

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ootachi
First of all, NaCl is now Pepper-only, so it is no longer compatible with
Firefox. Firefox uses the NPAPI, not the Pepper API. Pepper is itself an
instance of Google not showing interest in working with the other browser
manufacturers. The other browser manufacturers considered it unnecessary to
add two incompatible plugin APIs when the NPAPI already exists and could just
be extended.

Second, the position of every other browser manufacturer is that NaCl is
undesirable because (a) it's not compatible with JavaScript, so it requires
another language runtime and (b) that it locks the Web into x86 and ARM. As
bzbarsky of Mozilla posted here [1], if Google had made and pushed NaCl a
decade ago, the iPhone would be unable to browse the web. Google ignored the
other browser manufacturers' concerns and are now pushing NaCl to gain a
competitive advantage.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3391747>

~~~
nkassis
I appreciate your reply. As far as the Pepper API my understanding is that it
was an extension to NPAPI to improve it, not an attempt at creating an
incompatible API. I can't find any source on why Mozilla decided to not use
it. From the Pepper wikipedia page it looks like some of the goal of Pepper
would be very useful to every browser.

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curveship
Isn't the current stock browser open source, while Chrome is only mostly open
source? Does this mean that open source ROMs like Cyanogen won't be able to
distribute with a browser?

~~~
eklitzke
My assumption is that it won't be a huge problem, since Chrome is available in
the Android Market. Note that Maps, YouTube, GMail, etc. are already closed
source, c.f. [http://source.android.com/faqs.html#how-can-i-get-access-
to-...](http://source.android.com/faqs.html#how-can-i-get-access-to-the-
google-apps-for-android-such-as-maps)

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defualt
I wonder how this will affect Phonegap.

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Achshar
wait, the title seems misleading. Chrome wont be replacing android browser as
standard in ics. it has not even been confirmed for any future updates either.
"Standard browser" is probably poor choice of words.

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MrJagil
Will it eventually be available on iOS?

~~~
robin_reala
No. Apple currently don’t allow any browser engines apart from their
standardised WebKit on iOS. This is why you can’t currently get Opera or
Firefox on iOS (leaving aside Opera Mini which skirts the rules by running the
engine on a proxy server).

~~~
shareme
not correct, if Google ports their features back to Webkit and they are
accepted by the Webkit project than yes you will see it on iOS as Apple uses
the Webkit project.

~~~
nextparadigms
But won't the engines have to be identical? Won't Chrome have to use the exact
same engine/version as Mobile Safari? Chrome for Android actually uses a newer
version of Webkit than Mobile Safari, according to Anandtech, and it has a
higher HTML5 score.

And what about V8 and all the other features? Or they only have to use the
same rendering engine?

~~~
fpgeek
V8, as an interpreter of downloadable code (JavaScript), is explicitly and
intentionally forbidden by Apple's rules for their app store.

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Ziomislaw
lets just hope, that google learned on IE errors, and it will be possible to
uninstall chrome.

