76% of browsers now support WebUSB.? What will you build?
WebUSB is here and available in an estimated 76% of desktop browsers & 72% of all mobile browsers. This is a specification that has been in making for the last 5 years.
With the current level of availability, it is now ripe for use for building innovative & profitable products. It is now possible to build products that can facilitate USB based digital signing on document in cloud or on Google Doc, enable the use of flash disk for 2FA or for using a flash disk as a secure password manager.
If you are some who is looking for a product idea, WebUSB may be worth exploring.
A brief history of WebUSB Spec:
WebUSB has been in discussion since 2016. Due to its potential risk, Firefox & Safari has never implemented it in any form. Chrome had this added as an experimental feature since 2016. Later in 2017 WebUSB was enabled in chrome by default and swiftly disabled after privacy and security concerns were raised. Later the same year, in Chrome 61 WebUSB was re-enabled. From that point till 2019, chrome was the only browser to support WebUSB.
Things however drastically changed in 2018 when Microsoft adopted Blink & V8 and made edge a chromium-based browser. This paved way for the second most used browser in Windows OS to get support for WebUSB.
Fast forward today in 2021 chrome enjoys a whooping ~65.% share of total web browsers & Edge ~5% of it. Together Chrome & Edge is dominating the browser market.
Though not very pleasant news for the free and open web, this does make WebUSB a usable technology for many scenarios. Especially when you can safely assume that a higher proportion of office/enterprise systems uses chrome or edge browsers.
Like it or not, WebUSB is here to stay. And it is now open for innovation.
References:
- https://wicg.github.io/webusb/
- https://caniuse.com/webusb
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebUSB
- https://web.dev/usb/
#WebUSB #W3C #USB #Chrome #Edge #Blink #V8 #StartUp #Chromium #Firefox #OpenWeb #FreeWeb