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Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#71

Post by pekk »

zobzu wrote: post #62
ok_craig wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how when Opera deprecates its engine in favor of WebKit we all make a big deal about how it's bad for everyone. But when Google spins off their own version, we vilify them too... For real?

I don't think it has much to do with anything. Opera used Webkit because they had no choice. It was that or dying. Google forks webkit because even thus they have a massive control over it, they don't have _enough_ control. There are still things other contributors refuse loud enough. Well, like Dart. Or the implementation of Webkit2. Or what not. Since Google has the major browser marketshare, they're like "wait a m…

How exactly did you determine that the (sole) purpose of the fork is "full control"? And how specifically is that going to happen?

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#72

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sukuriant wrote: post #51
gurkendoktor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this contradictory? If a significant/relevant chunk of people use WebKit, and WebKit development lags behind Blink (and the others), then how will this not affect the web?

The idea is that, Webkit will have to keep up with the innovations in Blink, and maybe even try to innovate themselves, to maintain marketshare.

This is assuming that Apple cares very much about browser market share. They're not really a web company, they just need a decent browser to include with their OS. Nothing stops them from switching to Blink (or Gecko) and letting someone else spend the money building a competitive browser that they can just include for free.

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#73

Post by thedragon4453 »

coldtea wrote: post #48
jmillikin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me who the "we" is in your post, so I can take great care to avoid ever working for them.

> Please tell me who the "we" is in your post Well, it's not like I haven't added the notice "(the companies)" after "we" twice. By which "companies" (something also clear from the context), I mean Apple, MS, Google etc, the companies working on rendering engines and browser. I used "we" to adopt the parent comment's use of "we" and his idea of the web as a common project all those companies share. > so I can take gr…

Yeah, I don't really trust this. I don't see how:

"We're doing our own thing that we totally control and will likely only show up in our products"

is better than

"We're contributing to one of the best/most successful opensource projects around and thereby making the web better for people across devices and platforms".

for anyone other than Google.

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#74

Post by slacka »

> "For example, we anticipate that we’ll be able to remove 7 build systems and delete more than 7,000 files—comprising more than 4.5 million lines"

On my 2GB netbook, chrome has gone from my preferred browser to unusable due to the high memory footprint of recent builds. I wonder if this cleanup will help get the memory down to something reasonable like the level it was before Chrome 10.

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#75

Post by ams6110 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #72
sukuriant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that, Webkit will have to keep up with the innovations in Blink, and maybe even try to innovate themselves, to maintain marketshare.

This is assuming that Apple cares very much about browser market share. They're not really a web company, they just need a decent browser to include with their OS. Nothing stops them from switching to Blink (or Gecko) and letting someone else spend the money building a competitive browser that they can just include for free.

Apple cared enough to start the WebKit project. Though admittedly, ALL the browsers for Mac OS X in those days sucked.

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#76

Post by billions »

tgandrews wrote: post #24

To me it sounds like a good thing. We end up with 3 major rendering engines on the desktop; Gecko (Firefox), Trident (IE) and Blink (Opera and Chrome) and 2 major on mobile Blink (Opera and Chrome) and Webkit (Safari). This I think will help shake up some of monoculture. Chrome definitely doesn't have any level of domination over the enterprise market like IE6 on Windows did. That was the problem with IE6 not the bro…

Webkit was the only thing the mobile web had that apps did not: a mostly un-fragmented codebase. Now developers will have to test their mobile web-apps against even more browsers reducing time-to-market efficiency. Hopefully competition will lead to faster improvements by top players (Google), but the more likely scenario is the least incentivized player (Apple) will drag their feet re-creating an IE6 scenario where one browser will slow mass adaption of standards.

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#78

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ams6110 wrote: post #75
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is assuming that Apple cares very much about browser market share. They're not really a web company, they just need a decent browser to include with their OS. Nothing stops them from switching to Blink (or Gecko) and letting someone else spend the money building a competitive browser that they can just include for free.

Apple cared enough to start the WebKit project. Though admittedly, ALL the browsers for Mac OS X in those days sucked.

And that's the point. They care to the point that their operating systems continue to have competitive browsers available... but now they do. Why keep throwing money at it once you have what you need when others are willing to pay in your stead?

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#79

Post by linuxhansl »

Not sure what to make of this statement:

"the costs of sharing code now outweighed the advantages"

Does that mean Google will only be a good open source citizen as long as it is advantageous to them and on a project-by-project basis?

Edit: Well it is part of Chromium, which is open source, so maybe I was too rash.

Re: Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

#80

Post by mtgx »

tgandrews wrote: post #24

To me it sounds like a good thing. We end up with 3 major rendering engines on the desktop; Gecko (Firefox), Trident (IE) and Blink (Opera and Chrome) and 2 major on mobile Blink (Opera and Chrome) and Webkit (Safari). This I think will help shake up some of monoculture. Chrome definitely doesn't have any level of domination over the enterprise market like IE6 on Windows did. That was the problem with IE6 not the bro…

Which means getting Apple to allow other rendering engines on iOS should be an even bigger issue with Apple users in the future. Otherwise Safari will become the IE6 of iOS.
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