Chrome 32 beta arrives with animated WebP, NPAPI plugins blocked by default, and faster touch input for Android
A week after releasing the stable version of Chrome 31, Google has announced more features coming to Chrome 32 beta for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's browser strategy through 2013 has been one of tightening defaults: the Chrome 25 beta began blocking silent extension installs back in January, and the Chrome 28 beta pushed rich notifications for apps and extensions onto Windows in May. A week after shipping Chrome 31 stable, the Chromium team is now extending that same playbook to the oldest layer of the stack — the NPAPI plugin architecture that predates the modern extension system.
Blocking NPAPI by default is the most consequential of the three headline features because it touches Java applets and other legacy plugin content still embedded in enterprise and older consumer sites. Animated WebP, meanwhile, gives publishers a Google-controlled alternative to GIF, and the faster touch input work ties the desktop build closer to Android's interaction model.
First-order effects
- Developers and IT administrators whose sites depend on NPAPI content — most visibly Java applets — face breakage unless they push users to re-enable plugins manually or migrate off the API.
- Publishers gain animated WebP as a first-class format in Chrome, letting them swap heavyweight animated GIFs for Google's codec on the browser where it originates.
Second-order effects
- Plugin vendors are pushed toward rewriting functionality as native Chrome apps or HTML5, a shift the Chromium team itself is invested in given its confirmed Spark IDE project built as a Chrome app.
- Mozilla and Microsoft face pressure to match Chrome's default-blocking posture, since leaving NPAPI enabled leaves their browsers carrying compatibility and security burdens Google has just shed.
Third-order effects
- If the deprecation completes as signalled, the browser consolidates its role as gatekeeper over which web technologies exist at all — formats like WebP rise not by standards committee but by being shipped enabled in Chrome's defaults.
- The pattern of each Chrome milestone retiring a legacy surface points toward a plugin-free web, where cross-browser parity depends less on old shared runtimes than on whatever the dominant engine chooses to implement.
The trend: Chrome's rapid release cadence has become the primary mechanism for unilaterally deprecating legacy web technologies, from silent installs to NPAPI, with rivals left to follow or fragment.