Yes my friend, it is the default webview. That explains the bare bones look to it, the back button functionality, and the history or lack of. The default webview on android isn’t a full fledged browser and isn’t meant to be.

and it now has an open issue with Google

This is literally meaningless. You should see the amount of shite users raise on the issue tracker. What you, or the author, should do is link to the issue in question.

I note that the comments on Hacker News also aren’t favourable to this.