Google Chrome is not the default browser on Android 4.3+. There are now at least eight Chromium-based Android default browsers, and they are all subtly, though not wildly, different.
The number of Chromium family members has recently risen from nine to eleven with the addition of HTC and LG Chromium, default browsers for modern HTC and LG high-end devices.
Insanity.
I don’t see the problem. The engine is the same and that is the biggest part, if they each have their own interface that might make at least one of them halfway decent..
No they are more than skins read the article. There are differences in each ones rendering. Its fragmentation at its worst.
OEMS can’t get it through their skulls that hardware is the main differentiator, not software. Absolutely no one Weill buy a galaxy 6 because of the Samsung branded browser. Its gross arrogance that makes them think otherwise.
…What?
There are 2 reported differences :
– input type=”datetime” [lack of] support, described in the article itself as a “mild annoyance”
– Zoom reflow, which is a conscious UI trade-off decision which sacrifices layout for readability, about which webdev can’t do anything and don’t have to worry about, methinks.
As the situation stands, this is a non-event.
No one guarantees that these forks will be properly maintained: that security problems will be fixed in a timely manner, that their code base will be regularly synchronized with master.
Considering that OEMs are often lazy and terribly belated in releasing even minor Android updates (like say from 4.4.3 to 4.4.4) I’m pretty sure these browsers will get the least amount of attention.
What I don’t understand about this situation (and countless other similar situations in the Android universe) is why would LG/HTC/Samsung/Sony/etc. put any effort into re-engineering Chromium? This may not be a big engineering expense, but if it costs anything, why do it? Google will let you ship Chrome on your device if they’ll let you ship the Play Store, won’t they? So why bother? It’s not like anyone ever said “I’m going to buy an LG because the browser that comes with it is so much better than the browser that comes on the Sony.”
I’d even be willing to bet that most people who are actually using Samsung’s or LG’s browser don’t even know that they are. So, how does fiddling with Chromium help to sell phones?
Edited 2015-04-29 21:40 UTC
I’m assuming because there’s money to be made in it somehow. I can’t imagine they’d do it for any other reason. Worse than the browser situation though, is the SMS/chat app scene. Google had like 4 or 5 of them that they wrote themselves, then did all that work to incorporate all of them into Hangouts, and then they go and make another SMS app for Lollipop. I mean, WTF? It’s like they have board room meetings in which top execs ask themselves, ‘Gee… what could we possibly do to confuse the hell out of our customers?’
Edited 2015-04-29 21:56 UTC
Doesn’t Google pay third party app makers to include Google as the default search engine? I remember this being an issue with Ubuntu at one point. Maybe it’s similar here. If they make their own browser, they can set the affiliate links, and earn some income from the search in that browser.
That is true of chrome as opposed to chromium.
Most of these “forks” are purely a branding exercise. Once forked though, they have to remember to pull down and release those patches themselves…
The problem for all Android OEMs is that because they don’t build their own OS they cannot differentiate their products via the core OS and service stack unless they break from Google and fork Android. And that’s a big and dangerous step. They can try to differentiate with hardware but that’s hard (no pun intended) and with a lot of OEMs using off the shelf components making ones hardware truly different enough to make it have a distinctly different end user experience is well nigh impossible. Product differentiation is the key problem for Android OEMs.
What they can do is tinker with the UI and whatever else they can getaway with altering. The problem is that they are not companies with a deep hinterland of experience in developing software and its hard to gain that experience if a) you have not been making very complex software for a very long time, and b) you are not building the core OS in house.
So they tinker to make their devices different and occasionally they get things right and make something better but mostly they just tinker with no real positive outcome.
I still have trouble believing this, but I suppose you are right. It just seems to me that if you had limited resources, you would spend them on things you could advertise. If it can’t be directly tied to increased sales you shouldn’t be spending your limited resources on it.
Sure change the fonts, colors, and icons. Brand the hell out of it. But let your coders code things that can be advertised as “we have it and they don’t.” and I don’t see how a web browser fits that. HTC’s text reflow seems like a good example of something you CAN use as a selling point, but most of those other browsers seem pointless at best.
Dont forget a lot of applications rely on a browser’s rendering engine. For example if you click on a twitter link it opens it “within the app”
If for example Samsung have a really annoying bug in one of their home grown apps (which they use as differentiators) the choice could boil down to making a small change in the browser or a big chang / design rethink on their app.
We all work for companies and all know how often that “put in the quick hack for now and we’ll do it properly in the next version” happens
google puts terms on chrome use
carriers put terms on phone makers
CLASH -> NEW BROWSERS
It’s almost like anyone can just pick up the code and change it! What sort of system is that? This would never happen with closed source.
How many Trident based browsers are there anyway?
There are many Trident-based browsers out there, for once Maxthon was Trident-based. Microsoft made it easy to embed Trident in anything. Something doesn’t need to be open-source to be reusable, despite what GNU-evangelists want you to believe.
Although most of the things which embed Trident aren’t browsers, as such – they’re applications which are using it to render text like help pages, etc.
There are a few other Trident-based browsers, but not as many as for the WebKit engines… not all that surprising, I suppose, given how hopelessly obsolete Trident was for a long period of time (before MS started investing in it again).
Internet Explorer is falling apart! Edge is doomed from the start!
Nice flame bate there. What’s next, Microsoft is doomed too?
I think you need to fix your sarcasm sensor.
About as much flame bait is the original article.
Do each of these send different user agent headers, like the different Linux distros packages of Firefox sometimes do? That can cause interesting trouble.
We know how to fork!
OT – I got used to the original web browsers pie controls. Chrome is so huge at least some of the bloat could have been pie controls.
In other Android Chrome news, Google just put “Google Dev” (what it calls “unstable” on the desktop platform 🙂 ) onto Google Play in the last day or so – see:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chrome.dev
This is actually one step further than Android Firefox (which only does stable and beta on the Play store). Now if only Android Chrome had extensions, it might actually rival Android Firefox…
I second the extensions bit. I hung on to Firefox as long as I could for that reason alone, but it’s finally become too unstable on my phone to continue with it though I’m puzzled as to exactly what is happening there.
darknexus,
Ditto.
Though to be honest it’s unsurprised that google is against them. The first (and sometimes last) browser extension most people install is an adblocker make the web faster/less annoying. Google, as an advertiser first and foremost, doesn’t like it one bit, which is why it’s taking steps to control/eliminate extensions on various platforms…
https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-for-android-removed-from-g…
http://www.droid-life.com/2014/05/27/google-to-shutdown-chrome-exte…
I predict google won’t be changing their stance on extensions.
Heh, as if not having any extensions does any good there. There’s already Adblock Plus for Android which runs as a local web proxy, so if it’s an adblocker I want, I already have it regardless of browser. Sure it’s not in the play store, but that’s where this little checkbox in security settings comes in handy…