Following the various news discussed during Google I/O 2023, the company highlighted a series of news also for Chrome, with around 100 API changes coming to the browseras well as highlighting easier porting of Android apps to the web and support for faster AI and ML computation across devices.
In terms of portability, Google said that WebAssembly in Chrome will soon support Kotlin and Dart languages. Soon, developers who work with these codes in Android apps will be able to deploy them directly on the web, tightening the ties between the apps and what is functional in the Chrome interface.
Google even introduced the WebGPU as an API replacement for WebGL. The new technology uses your device’s GPU and runs three times faster than WebGL. The company further estimates that ML libraries can run 100 times faster on WebGPU than regular JavaScript.
If so, it will be a boon for developers and end users alike—on-device processing to alleviate security concerns, along with speed improvements. It might even pave the way for an AI that has privacy as a priority (something rare recently).
To improve browsing, Google is a member of the W3C WebDX community group and has now defined Baseline as the basic features that should be supported in all browsers — like Chrome, Firefox, Edge and even Apple’s Safari.
The Baseline platform will be numbered by year, with this year’s default being Baseline 23. It will receive annual updates that are compatible across all browsers – something like an operating system update for the entire web ecosystem, Google likes to think.
