Google Forks WebKit And Launches Blink, A New Rendering Engine

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/google-forks-webkit-and-launches-blink-its-own-rendering-engine-that-will-soon-power-chrome-and-chromeos/

by jordn • 13 years ago

72 39 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

Lightning• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5489025

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

" the decision to fork WebKit was entirely driven by the engineering teams and solely based on the fact that the engineers felt constrained by the technical complexity of working within the WebKit ecosystem."

Is this code for "They wouldn't take our changes so we said, 'Fork it!' and made our own." ?

mooism23• 13 years ago

“Currently, the majority of WebKit reviewers are from Google (95), with Apple coming in second (59)... Google is also currently responsible for the vast majority of commits to the WebKit repository...”

Doubtful.

mirsadm• 13 years ago

Do you have any proof that the statement is false?

coldtea• 13 years ago

Numbers are doubtful?

I mean, sure, one could fabricate them, but why, especially if he can easily be caught doing it? Those are things anybody can verify by looking at the repository stats.

Here's what I found with a cursory look: Google has overtook Apple in commits 2-3 years already:

http://blog.bitergia.com/2013/02/06/report-on-the-activity-o...

Older stats (already Google on top): http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2010/02/webkit-...

And a TechCrunch article on the issue: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/06/google-apple-webkit/

hp50g• 13 years ago

Reviewers and number of commits aren't really relevant stats. I'm the top committer and code reviewer at my company but it doesn't mean I write the most code :)

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

Reading through some of the analysis I agree, the story about the amount of glue necessary getting worse rather than better was pretty compelling. As a systems guy I find it amazing how intertwined the various parts are, between the process model to the rendering model, simplification there can only be good.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

> Is this code for "They wouldn't take our changes so we said, 'Fork it!' and made our own." ?

I think its probably more exactly what it says -- a way of eliminating the overhead of dealing with the complexity of the WebKit ecosystem. As noted in the article, "Google says, for example, that it will be able to remove 7 build systems and delete more than 7,000 files comprising more than 4.5 million lines right off the bat."

That's a whole lot of complexity that isn't relevant to what Google is doing with Chrome that is worth not having to deal with.

stock_toaster• 13 years ago

This[1] other article infers that those lines/files are related to webkit2 features of multiprocessing and sandbox code.

So it seems to me that ChuckMcM may not be far off.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/google...

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

Pretty sure it has more to do with their architecture changes RE: multithreading and embedding/porting.

justinschuh• 13 years ago

Nope. If Google wanted to push things through it would certainly be possible as the single largest contributor, but that's not a productive way for anyone to participate. Instead, it's just a matter of simple project divergence. Apple landed the WebKit2 layer a few years ago, which was largely incompatible with the Chrome architecture that predated it by several years. Some minor efforts were made to unify parts, but WebKit2 continued to move in a direction that was increasingly incompatible with the existing Chrome architecture. Rather than burden everyone by continuing to maintain a codebase between these increasingly divergent approaches, it made sense to split.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

_IT BEGINS_

We're switching out the cluster that was IE6 for Google Chrome. Mozilla, save us; you're our only hope.

Opera is going to contribute to Blink as well, so I guess there's that.

AaronFriel• 13 years ago

On the contrary, this saves us from WebKit being the new Trident from IE6.

crimsonzagar• 13 years ago

This is just a personal opinion, but for a browser I'd always support and use a not-for-profit one. No matter how fast, or perceptibly fast, an offering from a business entity is.

Here is why: 1. Tomorrow you, the billion dollar enterprise, will force real identity even more vehemently. 2. I certainly don't want to see a constant hum of ads. 3. I don't want to turn my computer into a wide-mouth bucket for chrome apps, for example, which have higher than normal access and rights on my disk.

Your browser could potentially take me back into an era of 'download-yet-another-snoopy-app' into your machine yeah! Put it all behind a curated garden and keep me happy within. Where web on tablets and smartphones is today. Nope, not for me.

jmillikin• 13 years ago

Current popular browsers are:

  * Firefox
  * Chrome / Chromium
  * Internet Explorer
  * Safari
  * Opera

All of them are produced with the aim of benefiting their parent corporations in some way -- for example, Mozilla Corp rents the default search engine setting to Google for hundreds of millions per year.

I currently use Firefox and Chromium as my primary browsers, because they are the only popular browsers that are open-source and therefore the only browsers I fully trust. Despite coming from "business entities", neither browser shows me ads, requires me to enter a government-approved name, or requires me to install third-party applications.

ZeroGravitas• 13 years ago

Mozilla Corp was set up by Mozilla Foundation for tax reasons. Firefox is produced with the aim of meeting the foundation's mission.

asadotzler• 13 years ago

"All of them are produced with the aim of benefiting their parent corporations in some way -- for example, Mozilla Corp rents the default search engine setting to Google for hundreds of millions per year."

You've crafted a sentence that will mislead people.

Mozilla did not, and does not, make Firefox in order to generate search revenue. Mozilla makes Firefox to directly advance Mozilla's non-profit, public benefit mission to improve the Web.

Firefox is not produced with the aim of generating revenue. It never has been and it never will be.

awakeasleep• 13 years ago

Let's all take a deep breath and contemplate the times when we have been as self-assuredly wrong as the author of the above comment. Here's to civil discussion that shores up the spots in life where we're ignorant.

OGinparadise3• 13 years ago

Duh! Chrome, Youtube, Maps, Android and virtually everything serve Google's $$$$ making efforts. Same applies to Microsoft and other large corps, no matter how much they spin.

So I use Firefox and will use for as long as they are independent.

teej• 13 years ago

You do realize that Google pays Firefox $300M a year, making them at least somewhat aligned to the business of Google?

OGinparadise3• 13 years ago

Yes, and I suspect that Firefox is, at least, not going to work against the way it makes its money (ads) but the alternative browsers have bigger conflicts of interest.

altcognito• 13 years ago

I had to look that up just to verify it was that much. 300M is a boatload of money per year.

http://allthingsd.com/20111222/google-will-pay-mozilla-almos...

saosebastiao• 13 years ago

That is like saying Brendan Eich is beholden to Mozilla because they currently pay him. Don't forget the fact that he could get a job in less than a minute's worth of effort at pretty much any tech company in the world. Mozilla's traffic has a value that is independent of Google.

yalogin• 13 years ago

This could also be code for we are implementing features that we don't want to contribute to WebKit.

vacri• 13 years ago

Please, when you make a new project, please, please don't use a pre-existing English word. Perl? Great name. Searchable. You won't be contaminated and neither will you contaminate others. Tumblr? Same thing.

Python? Well, has a lot of groundswell so now tech 'owns' the name, but you contaminate other people's search.

Rust? (or a million other projects without python's heft) The reverse issue.

Blink also has the problem of already being a word used occasionally in web design (bad or otherwise).

thatthatis• 13 years ago

At least until a quick and convenient context setting syntax enters the mainstream search syntax.

Id love the ability to search "Json parsers [python]" or "music packages [django[python[programming]]]"

JamesAcorn• 13 years ago

'Chrome' used to refer to the GUI elements that surround a webpage - scrollbars, back button etc. Google changed that.

Google will effectively Google-bomb the web development word 'blink' too. It is no big loss.

dchichkov• 13 years ago

"Don't Blink. Blink and you're dead. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't Blink. Good Luck."

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

"A Short Translation from Bullshit to English of Selected Portions of the Google Chrome Blink Developer FAQ"

http://prng.net/blink-faq.html

yardie• 13 years ago

Well, talk about taking your ball and going home. News like this is something I would have assumed from Apple rather than Google (based on the amount of code they've contributed).

Maybe it's political, maybe it's technical but this is a bit of news I expected yet didn't see coming.

chesh• 13 years ago

By forking WebKit Google is fucking Apple

Google Forks WebKit And Launches Blink, A New Rendering Engine

Related Stories