Google won’t fix bug hitting 60 percent of Android phones

Just as Google is coming under fire for publicizing a Windows bug two days before Microsoft released a fix, the company is now in the crosshairs because of its approach towards updating its own software.

Not for the first time, a bug has been found in the WebView component of Android 4.3 and below. This is the embeddable browser control powered by a version of the WebKit rendering engine used in Android apps.

Android 4.4 and 5.0, which use Blink rather than WebKit for their WebView, are unaffected. But by Google's own numbers, some 60 percent of Android users are using 4.3 or below. As such, this is a widespread, high-impact bug. The normal procedure would be to report the bug to Google, and for Google to develop a fix and publish it as part of Android Open Source Project release.

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