Last Tuesday, Google rolled out its 79th Chrome update to an estimated 2 billion users. Unfortunately, the normally “seamless” update caused more problems as it caused some Android apps built with ‘WebView’ capabilities to lose all the data. This means that developers around the globe might’ve landed in a soup. Thousands of irate users (estimated 15%), lost their progress in games & business apps, which couldn’t be replaced.
The problem reportedly occurred because Chrome’s developers failed to move files from version 78 to 79 to the correct location. The issue was discovered fairly quickly, & Google issued an immediate apology as well as a really fast correction.
Nevertheless, it’s a wake up call for both users & developers, since it clearly demonstrates a ‘what if’ scenario — updates are automatically installed on users’ devices, if the problem had gone undetected for long enough, all 2 billion users would have lost their data, which could have resulted in a class action court case for compensation.
As an example of how serious this problem could have been, consider a novelist who has written a book on an app using WebView, &, perhaps, invested in expensive editing — his entire work could’ve been lost, a rather unpleasant prospect, & not something the writer would want to let go of without compensation. It lends credence to the notion that all data, no matter whether stored for an app (by developers) or on an app (by users), should be backed up & stored in several locations…just it case!
