An important milestone is coming up
Google Chrome has been with us for a long time as both a browser and a lightweight OS, and today it’s made an achievement. A milestone we’ve been waiting for is now being teased — Chrome’s first three-digit version, Chrome 100, is now rolling out on the Canary channel.
For a bit of history, the browser was first released as a beta all the way back in September 2008 — Windows-only, to start. This was a little after the beginning of the so-called “second browser wars” that saw Internet Explorer’s near decade-long dominance begin to be eroded by Firefox. Rumors that Google was planning to make its own browser started circulating in 2004 — then-CEO Eric Schmidt was initially opposed to making one but changed his mind after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought aboard a bunch of Mozilla Firefox developers to build an initial prototype. The Chrome project began its development in 2006, spearheaded by Sundar Pichai, who would then go on to become the current CEO of Google.
After its release, the browser quickly gained momentum, overtaking Firefox in 2011, and from 2012, it was all set to become the most used web browser in the world, so it’s safe to say that Google’s gamble paid off. Furthermore, Chromium, the open-source project that Chrome is based on, now also serves as the base for other browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Opera, and more. So even if you’re not using Chrome, if you aren’t on an iPhone or iPad, chances are you’re reading this in a browser that’s based on it anyway — it’s become that dominant.
While the hundredth version of Chrome isn’t supposed to be particularly groundbreaking in terms of features, it’s still a significant numerical milestone — and one that might cause issues for some websites. The newest v100 release is limited to the Canary branch, and we’ve confirmed it’s available for both Android (v100.0.4845.0) and Windows (v100.0.4846.0) — you can download the former from the Play Store or APK Mirror. If you aren’t familiar, Canary is the most bleeding-edge, unstable, and potentially buggy version of Chrome there is, short of straight-up building Chromium from the current source, and we don’t recommend you try it out just to enjoy the big new number.
Because Chrome 100 is only in Canary, it’s still going to be a while until we see it roll out in the stable branch — at which point, expect a little more fanfare from Google. With the new, faster release schedule, Chrome 100 is expected to hit stable at the end of March, barring any delays.
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