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Over time, the Android Browser has come to share more and more code with Chrome (both WebKit and Chromium).

Finally is right. Having watched my team deal with painful Android WebKit bugs for the last few weeks, I am very glad to read more news that the Android WebKit is getting Chrome-ier. When you go deep on making a rich web application work there, you find sharp corners all over the shop. Small things such as dealing with focus and the like…. really painful.

The Chrome team has been chomping at the bit to work closer on Android WebKit, and with the tablets coming into the market there was yet another reason to deliver a more compelling browser. I look forward to seeing the fruit of this labor:

Over time, the Android Browser has come to share more and more code
with Chrome (both WebKit and Chromium). This approach has a number of
advantages for the WebKit community:

1. Android WebKit no longer requires a separate build system because
   we are able to reuse Chromium’s gyp system for building.
2. Android no longer requires a separate set of WebCore clients,
   platform abstractions, and embedder APIs because Android shares much
   of this code with the Chromium port.
3. The Android layout tests results more closely match chromium-linux
   and more expected results can be shared.

We plan to start by setting up a webkit.org build bot that will
compile Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and
toolchain. We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the
Chromium port to achieve this. We’re fully committed to maintaining
this new flavor of the Chromium port of WebKit and having a build bot
up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task. At
the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android
port. This includes the Android-specific code in
WebCore/platform/android, as well as any code guarded by the
PLATFORM(ANDROID) macro.

We’re looking forward to a much better collaboration with the WebKit
community and we’d be very grateful to receive any feedback on this
plan.

Thanks,
Andrei, Steve, Ben