The blog post doesn't go into it, but I'm curious to know what the long-term implications of this release are for the built-in android browser and the android SDK's WebView and WebChromeClient.
If this is indeed the first step towards decoupling the browser from the Android platform itself, I would expect to see continuing development of those aspects of the SDK to dwindle and die completely, leaving them in the dust feature-wise when compared to native apps, and putting the people who work on web-wrapper-apps at an even more serious disadvantage.
That's a very good question indeed, especially since some seem to suggest that Google will eventually replace the stock browser with Chrome, and Chrome is proprietary.
The FAQ's been linked to a couple of times from here, and it vaguely says:
Are you still working on the Android browser, or are you dropping support in favor of Chrome?
Android Browser and Chrome for Android are both derived from Chromium and already share a lot of code. We will continue to evaluate where it makes sense to harmonize our efforts; for instance, Google now has just one port of WebKit to maintain.
If this is indeed the first step towards decoupling the browser from the Android platform itself, I would expect to see continuing development of those aspects of the SDK to dwindle and die completely, leaving them in the dust feature-wise when compared to native apps, and putting the people who work on web-wrapper-apps at an even more serious disadvantage.