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

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. 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. This time, Google said it will tell original equipment manufacturers about the problem, but has no interest in fixing it. Google producing a patch for Android 4.3 and below would only be the first step. OEMs would have to bake that patch into their own firmware updates, mobile operators would have to validate and customize those firmware updates further still, and it's unlikely that, in practice, many Android users would ever receive the patch. But without Google taking the first step, even that slim possibility is eliminated.