Chrome for Android is a win for everybody. Except, of course, most users. As of Google's latest Android platform numbers, only 1% of devices are running Ice Cream Sandwich. That will change as 2012 moves along with adoption accelerating from new device purchases and updates. Chrome for Android immediately becomes one of the go-to browsers on the platform, which is good for HTML5 development, reliability and security.

The best thing that Chrome for Android brings to the table is robust HTML5 integration. The native Android browser is known to have mediocre HTML5 performance (pre-Ice Cream Sandwich) but Chrome for Android promises to make up what has been lacking.

That will include a hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, HTML5 video specs support along with Indexed DB (for offline caching, presumably), WebWorkers and WebSockets.

The biggest advantage for mobile HTML5 though will be the ability to bring Chrome tools to the Android platform. If a developer knows how to work in Chromium, working in Chrome for Android will be a seamless transition. This is where the possible convergence of the Chrome and Android platforms will take place.

"Much of the code for Chrome for Android is already shared with Chromium and over the coming weeks, the Chromium team will be upstreaming many new components developed for Chrome for Android to Chromium, WebKit and other projects," Arnaud Weber, Google's engineering manager for Chrome, wrote in a blog post.

Chrome for Android has already been put through its initial HTML5 tests with a score of 343 (+10 bonus) on HTML5Test.com. The native ICS browser scored 256 (+3 bonus) which put it in the middle of the pack in terms of mobile browsers.

Enhancements For Users

Chrome for Android promises to be fast, simple and reliable. It pre-loads pages with the Chrome Omnibox (only when Wi-Fi is enabled) and predicts where and what you want to navigate to. It also brings a simple user interface to the Android browser environment, something that many users will be very grateful for after dealing with some of the more complicated UIs from third-party options like Opera, Dolphin HD and Skyfire.

The best aspect of Chrome for Android though will be the ability to sign in to your Chrome browser and have access to all of your bookmarks, tabs and browsing history from anywhere. If you leave your computer with open tabs, Chrome for Android will recognize those and open them for you. Chrome will also be able to track your browsing history to better provide search suggestions. Like many other mobile browsers with desktop presences, Chrome for Android will also be able to sync your bookmarks to your mobile device.

This 1% Problem

We are going to be perfectly honest. No writer at ReadWriteWeb has a device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we could not put the Chrome Beta through the paces (most RWWers use iPhones as well).

And there is the rub. Next to no one has Ice Cream Sandwich yet, outside a couple Galaxy Nexus users. This poses a problem, if a temporary one. Many existing Android devices are never going to get the ICS upgrade and the devices that have it pre-installed are still in early adopter/Android geek territory.

For many, the Chrome for Android is just an exciting announcement to shrug at since most will never see it on their current devices. Chrome for Android developers have plenty of time to roll out dynamic Web apps before the mass of Android users actually gets the browser. So, perhaps there is a positive side.

Excited for Chrome for Android? Will you develop for it? What about signing in to Chrome across all your devices? Let us know your reactions in the comments.

StatCounter's analytics only include cellphones, excluding tablets from the mix. The global leader in mobile Web use is Nokia at nearly 40% of usage. The firm believes that Nokia's global dominance is due to high penetration in emerging markets like India. Apple is a strong No. 2 globally, while leading use in the United Kingdom and the United States.

While Nokia is the global leader, the strength of Apple is clear. With about 28.76% of use, Apple nearly doubles the next closest competitor, Samsung, by about 14%. If you take all the Android OEMs listed (Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony, Motorola and Sony Ericsson and "Google"), the Android OEMs make up about 24.72% of global mobile Internet usage.

Research In Motion fell about 10% from Jan. 2011 to Jan. 2012 from 18.15% to 8.3%. That is indicative of the global fall of BlackBerry sales and usage. In the U.K., BlackBerry remains the No. 2 device, behind Apple.

In North America, Apple has an astonishing lead in mobile Internet use, with 59.11%. No other OEM comes close, with Samsung holding the No. 2 spot at 11.43% and RIM third at 10.06%.

It is difficult to ascertain Apple's dominance of the mobile Internet access. For most of 2011, Android devices outsold Apple's iPhone globally and in the U.S. The end of the year rise is understandable as both of the U.S.'s largest carriers, AT&T and Verizon, boasted strong iPhone sales in comparison to Android, but after a year of eye-popping numbers, the Android ecosystem has not made a dent in iPhone sales in this metric. It could be attributed to user behavior or device/mobile browser performance or any of several sociological phenomena.

Outside of OEM share, one thing is clear: the mobile Internet is changing the way people access information. If history holds true, then more than one in every six Internet users in the world will be accessing the Web through cellphones by Jan. 2013.

Top photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Scoble is often the mouthpiece for these developers. To be fair, Scoble and I have met and are friendly and I find him to be a fine individual but the classic argument against him is that he is the living personification of the edge case. He knows everybody, talks to everybody and does a respectable job of eating his own dog food. Companies and developers, with good reason, respect his opinion. But, the way he inundates himself with all the great innovations of the ecosystem, he sometimes misses the reality of development and utilization in the rest of the world.

With respect to Scoble, this HTML5 argument is hogwash.

Path won a Crunchie for best design. For those not in the know, a Crunchie is an award show for best startups, design and innovation in the tech community hosted by TechCrunch, VentureBeat and GigaOm. It is the yearly culmination of the San Francisco echo chamber and, while interesting, is not really followed by many outside of Silicon Valley. That is not to discount what Path has created. We have noted the splendid design of Path at ReadWriteWeb as well and it is truly a very well made app.

Path is an edge case scenario in the world of mobile app development. It integrates social messaging, location check-ins, photography and music recommendations into a sophisticated timeline (a "path") that is endlessly scrollable and visually appealing. Path is the quintessential native app.

It would also be impossible in HTML5.

The limitations of HTML5 at this point are that it does not allow device access (to objects like the camera and location services), scrolling is often limited and multi-layered sound is very difficult to implement. See our recent coverage of the "HTML5 Developers' Wish List" for a fuller understanding to the limitations of the spec. All developers agree that HTML5 is still a work in progress and there is great hope that the standard will be advanced to a degree in 2012 that many of the problems that inhibit mobile developers will be solved. The key concept to remember with HTML5 is that it takes the one true "killer" app, the browser, and enhances its functionality.

To say that the best mobile developers and designers are pushing back against HTML5 is outrageous. It is like saying that Web developers and designers (by far the most robust group of Internet coders) are turning their backs on the standard that is taking the browser to the next generation. This is simply not true.

Like Scoble, I also talk to top developers on a daily basis. Some of the most talented coders and designers I know are working on creating dynamic experiences in HTML5 for mobile devices. That includes developers from Sencha, appMobi, Zynga and other games makers, mobile cloud developers and third-party Facebook developers. All see HTML5 as a great opportunity and are fully embracing the challenge. Look at Facebook in particular. Nobody would suppose that its developers are not some of the tops in Silicon Valley. The company is working towards progressing HTML5 and the apps ecosystem around it with innovative approaches to what the mobile Web can do.

For me to believe that the "best mobile app designers" are pushing back against HTML5, I am going to need more examples than three edge case native apps that have very specific functions. There is so much more to the mobile Web than a pretty native app.

Well, here is a story that satiates both needs. Mobile browser Opera Mini is predicting the winner of Super Bowl XLVI. By crunching aggregated anonymous traffic data, Opera Mini has correctly predicted the winners of five of the last six NFL playoff games. That is a lot better than the so-called sports experts. If you are betting on the game, maybe Opera is your new go-to source for inside info. What team does Opera have winning the big game?

None of that matters to Opera Mini. This is pure data analysis to make any geek's heart go pitter-patter. What Opera Mini does is look at traffic going through its mobile browser to each team's official website. In the division round, Opera Mini predicted that the Patriots would beat Tim Tebow and the Broncos, the Ravens would beat the Texans, the high-flying Packers would beat the New York Giants and the 49ers would put down the New Orleans Saints.

Opera did pretty well. The Giants upset the Packers. We will give Opera a pass on that prediction because, really, no one actually expected New York to beat Green Bay. My family was not terribly pleased with that outcome, by the way, being Wisconsin natives.

In the AFC/NFC championship games, Opera correctly predicted the Giants and the Patriots to win their games over the 49ers and Ravens, respectively.

To put it in perspective, professional pundits and Las Vegas odds makers are right about 55% of the time over the course of an NFL season.

And here we are, Super Sunday.

Opera Mini predicts that New England will get its redemption this time over the Giants.

"I'm betting everything I have in my online betting account at the moment on the Patriots," said Nils Brostrom, VP of communications for Opera Software in a release. "That means if the analysis is correct, I get a whopping $26 on the Patriots winning the Super Bowl."

Opera Mini also announced that it had 152.6 million global unique visitors in December 2011. That is an increase of 78.45% since December 2010.

Who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl? Being a New England native, I am a little biased. My prediction? Tom Brady and the Patriots will win it 31-24 over Eli Manning and the Giants. What is your prediction?

Some of the more significant enhancements include a full-screen API for Web apps, support for CSS 3D transforms and an improved handling of plugins and how they're updated.

This release also marks the start of Firefox's new Extended Support Release version, which it announced in response to longstanding concerns within the IT community about the browser's rapid release cycle, which can be a challenge for IT managers to keep up with.

This update also includes some enhancements to the mobile version of Firefox, which includes many of the same upgrades as the desktop version, plus improvements to Firefox Sync, which lets users sync their browser across devices. So far, Firefox's mobile footprint isn't anything close to the market share it commands on the desktop. It currently has a browser for Android, but has yet to make a serious foray into iOS, which has tighter restrictions on third party browsers.

As frequent and aggressive as Firefox's updates have become, the open source browser still has some catching up to do with Google Chrome and even less popular browsers like Safari and Opera when it comes to implementing certain features.

Dolphin and Evernote are teaming up to release two extensions to Dolphin's Android browser. The first and most exciting is powerful and popular Web-based image editor Skitch. The other is Evernote itself. These new functions are the first time that Evernote has reached out to a third-party Android browser.

Skitch as a stand-alone photo editor is only nominally interesting. Add it to the Web with browser-based functionality and it becomes a very powerful tool.

The other half of the announcement is not quite as exciting. Evernote for Dolphin Android is another step in Evernote's quest to be everywhere. Literally everywhere. Evernote is amazing at designing and shipping new products almost every week, whether it is a new mobile extension, a desktop extension, a new app like Hello or the integration of Skitch and other acquisitions into other products. Evernote for Dolphin will work in exactly the same way that any of its other browser extensions do: find content on the Web that you want to clip and save it to Evernote. This time, the content is from a mobile device.

There is a lot of competition between Android browsers. The top three are probably the stock Android browser shipped with every device, Dolphin and Opera. While the stock Android browser has not historically been a top tier performer, it looks like it got quite a bit better with the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Dolphin calls itself the first "gesture-based" mobile browser while Opera delivers speed and the ability to trim down on data usage.

Dolphin has recently started adding extensions to its Android browser and that may put it ahead of Opera for the time being. Dolphin for Android now has Skitch, Evernote, Box, ReadItLater, eBay Search and more (a couple dozen, not all relevant). Opera mobile does not yet do browser extensions.

Some of Mozilla's initiatives for this year include an HTML5 Web app store, a mobile operating system and perhaps most intensive of all, a decentralized system for user identification and authentication at the browser level. In other words, a browser-based replacement for usernames and passwords.

Secure as it may be, application-level encryption won't be practical for some of the things Mozilla is working on, a few of which will naturally require that more data points about users are collected. This is a big deal to consumers and legislators alike, as issues like user tracking and online privacy receive more attention in the press and the halls of the U.S. Congress.

A Five-Point Plan For Data Security & Privacy

So how will Mozilla secure your data in the future? They've proposed a five-point set of guidelines to govern their development moving forward. Data should be collected only when doing so presents an obvious benefit to the user, and the vendor (in this case, Mozilla) should always be aware of what data is being stored, as well as how, where and why.

Mozilla also promises to do its best to minimize how long any given data point is stored on its own servers. If data is not needed for an extended period of time, it shouldn't be stored for long, if at all. That data should also be invisible to the server whenever possible. "If we can implement a given feature by never sending data to the server, or by using application-level encryption, then we will," Mozilla said.

Finally, if it's possible to use anonymized, aggregate data rather than individually identifiable information, Mozilla's engineering team will strive to do it.

Before SOPA exploded as one of the biggest tech news stories in recent memory, there was a growing amount of focus being put on online privacy and related issues. User data tracking and retention have caught the attention of U.S. legislators, who have demanded answers from Amazon over the user privacy afforded by its Silk browser and expressed concern about online user tracking in general. This level of transparency on Mozilla's part is probably no coincidence in light of these issues and the microscope they will continue to be placed under in the near future.

Mozilla has heard the pained cries of IT managers everywhere and today announced that they're going to put out an Extended Support Release version of Firefox to help organizations better manage and support the software.

The ESR version of Firefox will be developed as a separate product from the Firefox consumers are used to using, and thus utilizing the ESR won't be without its drawbacks. For one, there's an increased likelihood of bugs being introduced and persisting, since the ESR won't have the same massive beta testing group that Firefox proper has. Over time, the ESR runs the risk of becoming less secure than Firefox itself, and might even confuse some users if they're accustomed to using the standard version at home.

The move represents a bit of a change of heart for Mozilla, who previously brushed off concerns about providing proper enterprise support. By contrast, Google Chrome has made an effort to ease the pain of IT departments. Late last year, Google's three-year-old browser surpassed Firefox as the second most widely-used browser, according to one firm's statistics. By taking the enterprise a little more seriously, perhaps Mozilla can manage to minimize the competitive threat posed by Chrome.

The new ESR will not cover Firefox Mobile or the Thunderbird email client. Mozilla says it will publish implementation details sometime in the next week.

The new beta also improves Chrome's security against malware attacks. The Chrome team reports that malware attacks exploiting user-initiated processes are on the rise. The browser can now analyze executable files - such as ".exe" and ".msi" files - that you downloaded yourself. Chrome will warn users to delete suspicious files.

Chrome's blistering pace of powerful, new features made it our best consumer Web product of 2011. The most recent version added support for multiple user profiles that sync, so users can access their browser data from any copy of Chrome using their Google ID. That update was more about convenience than security, but the upcoming release will bring that focus back.

Chrome is now the #2 browser in the world after Internet Explorer, but it's not just the features that make Chrome worth watching. Chrome developers, with the support of the open-source community, are pushing the Web ahead. Chrome is building upon new text-to-speech APIs and advanced audio features. It's pushing a new image format to challenge JPEG and PNG by reducing image file sizes, making the Web load faster.

A Browser For A Better Web

Chrome and Firefox developers are working together on Web Intents, standard protocols for Web apps to communicate, even if they don't know each other. As Chrome developer Peter Kasting wrote on Christmas Eve, the teams see each other as partners, not competitors. By improving their browsers together, they're making the Web better. A better Web means more eyeballs on Google services. That explains why Google was willing to drop a billion dollars to remain Firefox's default search provider.

It also explains why the Chrome team works so relentlessly to make browsing faster. In this instance, consumers' and Google's interests are aligned, and that makes for one heck of a Web browser.

You can try out the new Chrome beta today.

And no, this post was not sponsored by Google. We wrote it ourselves. ;)

Which Web browser(s) do you use, and why?

Browser trends from Sitepoint showed some IE6 death signs just a month ago, noting that more people browsed the Web on their smartphones than used IE6 and IE7 combined.

Yet, little more than one year ago, IE6 was still the third most popular browser in the world. At the time, companies were lazily using IE6 as a means of social control - social networking sites were nearly inaccessible through the dinosaur browser. This was all despite the ridiculous security risks it posed. Yet, at the time, the future of IE6 was still up for debate.

Web developers, designers and regular users noticed that IE6 was on the decline earlier last year, with only 2.9% of the U.S. Internet using IE6. At the time, the highest number of IE6 users were located in Asia.

Wordpress.com stopped supporting IE 6 last May and YouTube stopped supporting it back in early 2010.

Even Microsoft apologized to developers about that whole "wasting time on building stuff for IE6" thing. The company began automatically upgrading Internet Explorer on Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Regardless of how you feel about IE6, data shows that the end is near.

MG Siegler wondered why Google would bear this expense, "paying all that money to a competitor." He considered whether antitrust concerns played into the decision, or whether it was about mobile dominance. But Chrome engineer Peter Kasting offered a simpler answer today: "Google is funding a partner," not a competitor.

"One thing is certain: Google is not paying Mozilla a billion dollars out of the kindness of their hearts," Siegler wrote. "Doing so would be irresponsible to their shareholders. Again, they're paying all that money to a competitor." But Kasting contends that this is a misconstruction.

"People never seem to understand why Google builds Chrome no matter how many times I try to pound it into their heads," Kasting says. "It's very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible."

According to Kasting, "It's completely irrelevant to this goal whether Chrome actually gains tons of users or whether instead the web advances because the other browser vendors step up their game and produce far better browsers. Either way the web gets better. Job done."

Chrome and Firefox Can and Do Coexist

"It's not hard to understand the roots of this strategy," Kasting says. "Google succeeds (and makes money) when the web succeeds and people use it more to do everything they need to do. Because of this Chrome doesn't need to be a Microsoft Office, a direct money-maker, nor does it even need to directly feed users to Google. Just making the web more capable is enough."

By funding Firefox, Kasting explains, Google is not concerned about competition with Chrome. It's keeping another important browser alive. "Firefox is an important product because it can be a different product with different design decisions and serve different users well," he says. Kasting says that Google supported Firefox before work on Chrome even began, and it only built Chrome because it thought it would drive the Web to improve even faster.

The Teams Are Committed to Working Together

There's plenty of past evidence to support this interpretation. For example, even though Web apps are one of Chrome's most important revenue streams, Chromium and Firefox engineers have been working together to build open standards for Web apps to communicate.

On its own, Chrome has pushed the envelope for Web technologies, but as Kasting points out, "Mozilla is clearly committed to the betterment of the web, and they're spending their resources to make a great, open-source web browser." A better Web, according to Kasting, will serve Google's goals no matter what.

We've wondered this year whether Firefox was doomed, but if Google is committed to it, for the sake of the Web itself, the answer is certainly not.

The browser was knocked from its #2 slot behind Internet Explorer, though, at least according to one company's stats. The culprit? Google's Chrome, a browser half Firefox's age.

When the deal expired in November, it gave rise to speculation that Google might not renew it, which would deprive Firefox of about 84% of its annual revenue. That possibility seemed bolstered by the fact that Google's Chrome was said to have recently ousted Firefox as the number two browser on the market. An end to the deal could have put the future of Firefox in jeopardy, although some thought the ominous predictions were overblown.

When the original deal was signed in 2008, Google was only getting started with Chrome, which then grew to be a significant player in the browser market.

Still, Firefox is used by millions of people and Google still wants a piece of that action. If the Google deal were to expire, it's conceivable that Microsoft could swoop in and replace it with Bing, handing a significant chunk of the browser market share over to one of Google's chief competitors.

Whatever Google would gain by pulling the financial rug out from beneath Firefox would be overshadowed by it losing even a few points in the search market, which is where most of Google's revenue comes from.

Google has marketed Chrome as a speedier, more secure browser and capitalized on the familiarity people already have with the Google brand and its products. In the beginning of the month, at least one firm who's counting said Chrome had eclipsed Firefox as the #2 browser behind Internet Explorer for the first time ever. These numbers vary from source to source, but there's no denying that Chrome is growing fast. Even so, the company behind it evidently sees no reason to try and bury Firefox even further at this stage of the game.

To ensure such nightmares are never relived, the company will start rolling out automatic upgrades to Internet Explorer across Windows 7, Vista and XP, the company announced in a blog post today. Rather than relying on users to update the browser themselves or requiring you to trick your parents into updating theirs around the holidays, Windows will update to the latest compatible version of IE on its own.

This doesn't mean that every Windows machine on the planet will automatically be updated to the latest stable build of Internet Explorer overnight. The automatic update feature will be rolled out in Australia and Brazil first, and then to other countries over the course of next year. The software will upgrade to the most recent version of the browser that's compatible with one's operating system. Thus, Windows XP users can only go as high as Internet Explorer 8. Still, that's a huge and worthwhile improvement from version 6.

The feature will be available to most Windows users, but it can easily be disabled, much to the delight of corporate IT departments everywhere.

In Sencha's latest HTML5 benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich was put through the paces. The newest flagship Android device acquitted itself well. As Sencha puts it; "The Galaxy Nexus is a big step forward for developers looking to leverage HTML5 on Android." See the details below.

When Sencha does its HTML5 benchmarks, it runs a series of tests including JavaScript performance, HTML5/CSS3, rendering performance and accuracy. Sencha uses Acid3 for rendering performance, Modernizr for browser optimization, SunSpider for JavaScript benchmarks along with Sencha-specific tools Animator and Touch Kitchen Sink.

The Galaxy Nexus scores a perfect 100 on the Acid3 test. Yet, Sencha found that rendering was not completely perfect, with some imperfections such as a red/pink box in the top right of the rendering that shows ICS has almost-but-not-quite perfect rendering. The Modernizr test, which is used to see the nuts and bolts of the inside of the browser, faired well. Font-face, geo-location and CSS3 were all fully supported. Animations, relections, 2D/3D transformations and transitions were all found to be supported. This means that ICS finally brings the ability to build rich user interfaces to Android.

Web Workers and Web Sockets are missing from Android 4.0 as well as weak supprt for Input Types and WebGL. It boils down to the fact that Ice Cream Sandwich does not support a variety of APIs that iOS 5 does. See the list below.

In terms of performance, the SunSpider Javascript tests were what Sencha expected with a smartphone running a dual-core ARM processor. The Galaxy Nexus does well though does not outperform other platforms like the iPad 2, BlackBerry PlayBook or Kindle Fire.

The Nexus held up well when put through the paces of the Sencha Animator, meaning most games built with CSS3 should run perfectly. Other tests such as Canvas rendering and pinch/zoom qualities also performed better than expected, far above other Android builds.

HTML5 audio and video, some of the trickier implementations of HTML5, is fully supported by Ice Cream Sandwich. Sencha said that the Galaxy Nexus was the first phone to run the html5video.org test video inline, something that iOS 5 does not do.

The final test is the Kitchen Sink test. As you might expect, this is a experiment that throws everything possible at an HTML5 app (including, as they say, the kitchen sink) to see how it performs. As expected with such a major upgrade, Ice Cream Sandwich handles the Kitchen Sink better than any other Android build. It was not perfect. Not many platforms escape the Kitchen Sink unscathed. But it was still a decent performance. Rounded corners look smooth, multi-touch is supported and scrolling is improved. White-screen flashes in the rendering were still seen and page transitions often causes the browser to "blink."

To what does it all boil down? Android is finally an acceptable HTML5 platform. The hiccups, crashes and poor rendering seen with previous builds have mostly been eliminated. "Although still behind the current HTML5 gold standard of iOS5, Android 4.0 is night and day compared to previous versions," Sencha reports.

For developers working to create an HTML5 mobile Web app ecosystem for the largest mobile platform in the world, that is welcome news to ring in the new year.