

Google says it is working on automatically updating Android’s WebView - kinlan
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/12/google-says-working-automatically-updating-androids-chromium-based-webview-just-like-chrome/

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_wmd
Marvellous, so 6 years later they're finally getting around to taking mobile
security seriously. Too bad for the ~900 million buggy old webkits already in
distribution.

Of course, this is entirely the fault of the carriers!

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thorum
Is it too hopeful to think this might be a trial run at automatically
upgrading other parts of the Android framework? (I still dream of a world
where, when a feature like multiple selection is added to ListView, it's
immediately usable on 99% of devices.)

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sprokolopolis
Recently, they have been updating parts of Android through their Google Play
Services app. I don't know enough about Android development to know if this
webview is used much in the framework of the OS (especially with the new 4.4
out), but I think this is more for html5-based apps.

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zenocon
Just a plug for my little side project: [https://github.com/davisford/android-
chromium](https://github.com/davisford/android-chromium) if you need to do
this _now_ and don't want to wait... it can be done.

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bsaul
All those solutions to a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first
place, aka carriers not giving a crap about their users, and not being able to
deploy updates on time.

They are trying to solve political issues with technics. This may lead to
interesting new technologies, but somehow i doubt that it will solve the issue
completely one day.

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blinkingled
This is really good in one way - security will not be at the mercy of laggard
device vendors (though HTC has picked up lot of speed lately - they delivered
4.3 already on the One across multiple carriers and have promised 4.4 within
90 days.) and browser / WebView is one of the biggest attack vectors
(considering many apps use WebView), which will be patched automatically just
like any other app would be.

With this - we now have most of the important OS components updated via the
Play Store -Keyboard, GMail, Play Services, Chrome, various other GApps etc.
Technically they should also be able to ship the ART like that - but I am not
holding my breath on that one!

