Google Mistakenly Releases Google Chrome “Clankium” for Android

The latest update for Google Chrome Canary on Android came with a major surprise, and this time it’s not a new feature that I’m talking about.

Once installed, the update renamed Google Chrome Canary to Clankium and changes its icon to a dinosaur that’s hatching out of its shell. At this point, users were divided in two different parts.

First, there are those users who thought Google would change the name and the icon of its browser, and Clankium would be the name going forward. And second, some thought their devices got hacked or something like this, especially because the Chrome icon was nowhere to be seen.

Accidental release

And yet, there’s no reason to worry about this surprising Clankium release.

As it turns out, it was all just an accident, as Clankium is an internal codename that Google uses for the development of the browser, along with the icon that you might be seeing now on your Android device.

As 9to5google notes, Clank is the Chrome for Android codenamed, and Clankium might refer to the open-source engine, namely Chromium, that powers the whole thing. In other words, this is something that happened unintentionally.

Most likely, the very next Google Chrome Canary update will correct this and both the name and the icon should return to normal. The dinosaur icon will be gone forever once an update is released, and the browser should once again be called “Google Chrome Canary” once installed.

To be clear, accidents like this aren’t necessarily surprising. Google Chrome Canary is an experimental release that Google uses to test all kinds of ideas that may or may not make their way to the production build of the browser. Sometimes these ideas come with bugs that are corrected before features reach a more stable development channel, and users can contribute with feedback that help Google track down the problems and develop fixes.