GoogleIO 2026 Chrome Upgrades: Easier Browsing

Chrome on Android now supports approximate instead of precise location sharing The new feature is a small win for Android users, as it gives them more control over how much location data they share with websites.

Chrome on Android now supports approximate instead of precise location sharing The new feature is a small win for Android users, as it gives them more control over how much location data they share with websites. https://lnkd.in/grkgXMg4

Did you ever wonder how Google Chrome remembers the pages you visited yesterday… even after you close the browser? That’s where Linked Lists quietly come into play. At first, Linked Lists felt confusing to me because arrays already seemed enough. But real apps made the idea click differently. Think about browser history. Every webpage is connected to the next and previous page. So when you press: ← Back or → Forward the browser simply moves through connected pages one step at a time. That’s very similar to how a Doubly Linked List works. Each page stores: → the current page → the previous connection → the next connection And suddenly I started noticing this concept everywhere: → browser navigation → music player queues → photo galleries → undo/redo systems → image carousels → app navigation systems What’s interesting is: Arrays are great for fast indexing. Linked Lists are useful when systems need flexible connections and dynamic movement. Different DSA concepts. Different engineering purposes. That’s when Linked Lists stopped feeling like: “random nodes and pointers.” And started feeling like: the hidden structure behind smooth app navigation. This post is part of a series where I try to connect DSA and programming concepts with real-life examples to better understand how modern apps and systems actually work. #LinkedLists #DSA #SoftwareEngineering #ComputerScience #LearningInPublic #TechExplainedSimply

The new feature is a small win for Android users, as it gives them more control over how much location data they share with websites.

Ever catch yourself trying to use your phone's best features on your laptop? I’ve gotten so used to the incredible convenience of Android's "Circle to Search" on my phone that I constantly find myself wanting that exact same seamless, intuitive feeling while browsing on my desktop. Instead of waiting for a desktop equivalent, I decided to build it. 🚀 I recently developed a Circle to Search Chrome Extension that brings that mobile magic right to your browser. Rather than building a heavy native application, I focused on a lightweight, strictly web-based approach using JavaScript, the Canvas API, and Chrome Extension APIs to make it incredibly fast. Here is how it works: Just hit Alt + S on your keyboard that appears the moment you circle something, giving you quick options: 🔍 Search: Instantly crops your selection and runs it through Google Lens. Building this was a fantastic deep dive into background service workers, OffscreenCanvas for image cropping, and integrating external APIs cleanly into a browser environment. You can check out the source code and try it yourself here: https://lnkd.in/g2g8eU46 I'd love your feedback—what should I add to this extension next? And what other mobile features do you desperately need on your laptop? Let me know in the comments and let's see if I can build it! 👇

Thrilled to see this out in the world! My team and I have been hard at work bringing Approximate Location to Chrome on Android. 🌐🔒 Our goal was to give users more control over how their location is shared. Now, Chrome users can choose to share just their general area with websites that don't need precise location data to function. To support this, we’re also releasing new APIs that let web developers request approximate location by default. A massive thank you to everyone on the team who helped take this from concept to launch! Read more about it here: https://lnkd.in/ethsm3sK

Chrome on Android now supports approximate instead of precise location sharing The new feature is a small win for Android users, as it gives them more control over how much location data they share with websites. https://lnkd.in/g3Pd7uV9

Google just announced Gemini Intelligence at the Android Show and the ramifications for the web and SEO are huge. "Android is transitioning from an operating system into an intelligence system." Chrome will now complete tasks for you in the background. Book appointments. Fill forms using context from your connected apps. Summarise web content without the page ever loading. I've been saying websites are dying for 18 months. Today Google confirmed it in a keynote. The "device" (Mobile or Laptop) is now the orchestration layer. The web is the substrate. The visit is optional. At Harton Works we've been building WebMCP tool contracts on client sites for exactly this reason, because the brands that get invoked by agents are the ones that exposed themselves properly to them. Everyone else is a data source that never gets called. If your brand can't be invoked, it doesn't matter how well it ranks. #googleintelligence #aiseo #agenticlandscape

Google shipped a dungeon crawler whose NPCs vibe-code web apps at runtime, as a Gemma 4 demo. Game loops happen to be the cleanest teaching env for agentic workflows. State, goal, action, reward, already baked in. Beats reading another paper about it. https://lnkd.in/gDWHsk87

I used to open Chrome DevTools, stare at the flame graph, and close it. It never told me enough to actually act on. React 19.2 changed that. It added two custom tracks inside the Performance tab (Scheduler and Components), and for the first time, React's internal work sits in the same timeline as your browser paint events. I used them properly for the first time on an input lag issue. Typing felt delayed. Lighthouse showed nothing obvious. Opened a performance trace, went to the Scheduler track, and immediately saw a block of work firing on every keystroke. Zoomed into Components and a parent was re-rendering ~40 times per interaction, cascading into its children. Fix was memoizing the expensive children and wrapping non-urgent state updates in startTransition. Re-renders dropped to 2-3. Input lag gone. Old loop: Lighthouse → React Profiler → guess → change something → repeat. New loop: Scheduler → Components → actual diagnosis. You don't need to install anything. Just upgrade to React 19.2 and record a session. The tracks show up automatically under a "React" section in your timeline. If your app feels slow and you can't pinpoint why, start here. Something usually shows up fast. What does your debugging flow look like when you're chasing slow renders?