Aug 23, 2011 08:48 GMT  ·  By

Android's browser has always been a source of confusion. The fact that Google refused to call it anything, besides "Browser" didn't help. The browser in Android shares quite a lot with Google's other browser, the touted Chrome, but it differs enough for Google to not call it Chrome.

Essentially, the Android browser is based on WebKit, the rendering engine that is used by Chrome, Safari and a number of other desktop and browsers.

It also uses the V8 JavaScript engine, used by Google Chrome. While Android is open source, Google wants to provide an upstream version of its modified WebKit that it uses in Android, something it hasn't done until now, but also provide the source code for other parts of the browser.

In time, the Android browser has started sharing more code with Google Chrome, and Chromium, its open source brother, besides WebKit and V8. As such, the team is now working on providing a full port of Chromium's WebKit for Android.

"Over time, the Android Browser has come to share more and more code with Chrome (both WebKit and Chromium)," Google's Andrei Popescu writes.

"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," he explained.

"We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the Chromium port to achieve this," he said.

This upstream version of the code will be slightly different from the one the Android browser uses, but it will be based entirely on the Chromium WebKit port. With the code Google provided, developers could potentially create their own Android browsers while reusing much of the code Google uses.

"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," Google added.