Google Chrome 21 beta can interact with cameras, mics, and game controllers
The latest beta version of Google Chrome adds two new APIs that allow web developers to do a few interesting things. They can write web apps that will use your computer's mic or camera without a plugin.
Context & Ripple Effects
This beta delivers on a roadmap Google previewed in November 2011, when TechCrunch reported that native gamepad, webcam, and WebRTC support was slated to arrive in Chrome in early 2012 — the gamepad, webcam, and WebRTC plans now landing as two concrete APIs in the Chrome 21 beta. The pickup was unusually broad for a beta release note: ZDNet, Engadget, The Verge, The Next Web, Ubergizmo, and Google's own Chromium and Chrome blogs all carried it on or about July 9, 2012.
The timing matters because Chrome enters this from strength: by December 2011, Chrome 15 had overtaken Internet Explorer 8 as the world's most popular single browser edition — the first non-Microsoft browser to hold that spot in years — giving Google's API choices real weight over where web developers invest.
First-order effects
- Web developers can now write Chrome apps that capture microphone and camera input with no plugin at all, removing the Flash dependency that previously gated browser-based video chat and recording.
- Game developers get a documented path to read game controllers from the browser, opening browser-based gaming to hardware beyond keyboard and mouse.
Second-order effects
- Adobe's Flash and other plugin vendors lose one of their remaining moats — privileged hardware access — as the browser itself absorbs those capabilities, pressuring them to justify their runtime at all.
- Native desktop apps whose core value is camera, mic, or controller access face a free browser-based substitute, shifting some developer effort from app-store distribution toward the open web.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the browser consolidates into the default platform for real-time communication and peripheral access, with standards bodies rather than plugin vendors deciding which hardware the web can touch — and permission models becoming the new battleground for user privacy.
The trend: The browser is steadily absorbing the hardware-access capabilities that once required plugins or native apps, turning Chrome's release cadence into de facto web platform policy.