Google resumes rollout of Chrome 79 after ‘catastrophic’ bug
Users and developers called the WebView bug a “catastrophe” and a “major issue” in the comments on Chromium’s bug tracker.
The rollout was paused as a result, but Google acknowledged the update had already reached 50 percent of devices by then.
The bug was causing Android app data to get deleted because of a botched up migration process.
Google is urging users to charge their passwords after fixing a vulnerability reported in the Chrome 79 bug. The new update to the internet browser was automatically rolled out to millions of users around the world, and a bug in the update was deleting data from Android apps with access to Android’s built-in WebView.
According to 9to5Google, users and developers called the bug a “catastrophe” and a “major issue” in the comments on Chromium’s bug tracker. According to a Google developer active on the Chromium tracker, Chrome 79 changed the location where it stores web data, and data was getting deleted because of a botched up migration process. The rollout was paused as a result, but Google acknowledged the update had already reached 50 percent of devices by then.
This week, Google realised it was a dire situation where any potential fix would require either rolling back to Chrome 78 and risk losing over a week of data or, push through with Chrome 79 and delete potentially years of user data.
However, a few days back Google announced a fix for the bug days ahead of schedule along with claiming the bug hit just 15 percent of users instead of the potential 50 percent it feared. Google also said it managed to recover the data that was feared lost. Google has resumed rollout of Chrome 79 now.
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