Google’s latest move could easily be misconstrued as “evil,” but here it is: Google Chrome for Android builds now seem to require a build of Google Play Services. If you’re not aware, Google Play Services is the driving force behind many of Android’s best features, and is the standard platform for Google to introduce new APIs, features and other tools for developers and users.
So what does this mean? It means Android devices that don’t include Google Play Services — like Amazon’s phones and tablets or pretty much any device that doesn’t come with Google Play or Google’s other apps — might not be able to run Google Chrome for Android.
Your first question might sound something like this: “If Google Chrome for Android is only available from Google Play, then what’s the big deal?”
Well, Chromium – the browser project Google Chrome is directly based on — is open source, so any developer or advanced user with the technical know how can still build the app from source code and load it up onto any compatible Android device that allows sideloading. The amount of users who might have a non-Google Play Services device and want to do that is probably extremely slim, but it’s still a pretty big deal for them.
Google says they have to do this in order to facilitate publicizing code that was previously kept private, with the main example being the code that makes Casting video to Google Cast devices possible. The technical details of why this change was needed to make that happen have yet to be provided, but we’ve reached out to Googlers and contributors to the Chromium project to see if we can find out more.
For a vast majority of you, this won’t change a thing: Chrome will continue to function perfectly normal on any Android device that uses Google Play Services. For the few that it does affect? Sit tight, and we’ll hopefully have more details in the moments to come.
[Chromium via Google+, thanks Tom!]
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