Chrome has Finally Come to Android (But Only to 1% of All Android Devices)

Frederic Lardinois

Feb 7, 2012 — 2 min read

This definitely took a while, but Google just launched Chrome for Android. Don't get too excited about this yet, though, as it is only compatible with Android 4.0 and it's not clear if Google has any intention of releasing it for earlier versions of Chrome as well, but given that Google is likely making use of the hardware acceleration features in Android 4.0, this seems rather unlikely. The app is available in the Android market now.

The vast majority of Android users, of course, doesn't have access to the Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 update yet – indeed, just about 1% of current Android devices currently run the latest version of Google's mobile operating system.

chrome on android

Just like the desktop version, Chrome for Android was built with a focus on speed and simplicity. It features Google's omnibus for both search and navigation, lets you swipe between an unlimited number of open tabs so there is no 8-tab limit like on Apple's Safari and you can sync your bookmarks and open tabs between your desktop and mobile browser.

If you are stuck on an older version of Android, of course, you still have a wide variety of browsers to choose from. Opera, Firefox and numerous other vendors offer viable alternatives to the built-in browser and unlike iOS, Android makes it easy to set any browser you like as your default choice.

About Time

It's always been a bit of an oddity that Google didn't use Chrome as its default browser for Android. Chrome, after all, is a runaway hit on the desktop and is currently one of the most popular browsers on the market. Android, however, always features a relatively sub-par browser that couldn't really compete with Apple's Safari.

📝Google's surprise AI podcast hit

Google used to be a company where experimentation was encouraged -- or at least it felt like that from the outside. Now it's hard to remember when Google last launched a new product that was an immediate hit. But with NotebookLM and its AI podcasts, Google finally scored

🪧 Pressed words

I don't think anyone outside of Matt Mullenweg had the recent WordPress/WP Engine drama on their bingo card for this year. After a bit of early confusion, I think it's now clear that this is, in many ways, an extension of the open source discussions

🔒Now's the time to prepare for the post-quantum era

I've followed the development of quantum computing for the better part of the last decade. For the longest time, it's been "just around the corner" and with the advent of generative AI, any of the hype around the technology has receded into the background.

The week after CrowdStrike

It's been a week... Given everything that's happened lately, it's hard to believe that the CrowdStrike outages hit only a week ago. We're now deep in the clean-up phase of that particular disaster and while the blame for this particular incident falls

About Time

Read more

📝Google's surprise AI podcast hit

🪧 Pressed words

🔒Now's the time to prepare for the post-quantum era

The week after CrowdStrike