
China’s first ‘fully homegrown’ web browser found to be Google Chrome clone - dexterpe
https://shanghai.ist/2018/08/16/chinas-first-fully-homegrown-web-browser-found-to-be-google-chrome-clone/
======
btown
Looking at what it takes to actually implement the "belly of the beast" from
scratch, I don't blame them.

(Also, after seeing the below 350-line function that's part of a 3113-line
file, I now know that whenever I'm yelling at CSS layout behaving weirdly,
there's someone with a much, much more frustrating job.)

[https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/components/layout...](https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/components/layout/block.rs#L755)

EDIT: for anyone who doesn't know, [https://servo.org/](https://servo.org/) is
Mozilla's ambitious project to rewrite their browser from scratch with
concurrency thought in from the beginning, supported by Rust's unique approach
to safe concurrency. Parts of it have already made it into Firefox:
[https://bholley.net/blog/2017/stylo.html](https://bholley.net/blog/2017/stylo.html)

~~~
jerf
"(Also, after seeing the below 350-line function that's part of a 3113-line
file, I now know that whenever I'm yelling at CSS layout behaving weirdly,
there's someone with a much, much more frustrating job.)"

Browser authors are on the receiving end of over 20 years of standards all
written by people who were not, personally, the ones implementing them, plus a
healthy dollop of "code that worked in this one browser once and become a de
facto standard", for which the way tables format themselves in all their
myriad ways comes to mind, based around whatever was convenient in already-
crufty codebases now long dead.

And then all these nightmares get together and interact. And the end users
expect this to be fast. And web developers expect to be able to reach into the
middle of this epically complicated data structure and tweak a style and have
what may literally be the entire page rerender, and they expect that to be
fast and easy. And using a language that was never written to be fast. (If
anything, Javascript was written to be _implemented quickly_ , if you read the
story about where it came from. There was no time to be worrying about how
well it could be JIT'ed 10ish years later.)

I don't spend a lot of time wondering why my browser is so slow; I often find
myself wondering how it manages to be so fast. The spec for a browser is
insane. I definitely believe that _a_ future of browsers will be a combination
of web assembly and a much more raw rendering layer that will offer access to
font rendering and the OpenGL primitives, and a non-trivial number of the
biggest websites will eventually implement their own renderers. I say "a"
future because the current web rendering system will be around to the end of
my prognostication powers. But I suspect this bypassing of the "legacy"
renderer is also ultimately inevitable. Give it about 5 years or so.

~~~
mamcx
I wonder why browser makers not take full advantage of the high churn of the
JS ecosystem to move forward.

Let put a end to the madness, and say "after 2020, not more in the old apis"
and do a clean standard. Then take advantage of the fact html/js have tags
that could declare versions, and when a old page show, use the old rendered,
and when a new, use the clean one.

By then, most PC/mobile devices are powerfull enough to have 2 renders alive
and the transition will be fast for more big/popular sites.

~~~
amelius
A better approach would be to allow websites to implement their own render
engine. If they don't supply a render engine, then the browser picks the
default one (which, at some point, will stop being updated).

~~~
mbrumlow
And am sure this will happen. At some point websites will start shipping
rendering with webasm. I am it keen on the details but a well done one could
use a canvas to do the rendering.

As a anadotal. We can already fo to websites that run vms and emulate old
operating systems. I dont this it is far fetched to run a web browser in a web
browser.

~~~
wvenable
Unfortunately that destroys accessibility. If you want to support
accessibility, then you need a more complicated rendering target than
something like a canvas.

~~~
amelius
With modern ML, that is not true. For example, a browser could easily run OCR
on the frame-buffer and read it out loud.

In fact, the approach would be more general, since a lot of text is already
embedded in images on a lot of websites (think also about ads).

~~~
realityking
If you look at any platforms accessibility APIs, there’s a lot more to it than
just exposing text.

The simplest example: how do you indicate a graphic or piece of text is a
button or link? How do I set the alternate text if it’s a graphical button.

~~~
amelius
The render engine still has to do that. But that isn't much different from how
it works now, where the website has to provide the necessary information.

Besides, nobody says we can't have a protocol for some additional
accessibility information.

~~~
ljm
And then somebody says "how about we abstract this into some kind of markup
language?" and we've come full circle.

~~~
amelius
A common markup language would be great! As long as we use it in a way that
keeps us far away from compatibility problems.

~~~
wvenable
But you have to make it extendable because you can't predict every possible
use-case. So some kind of Extensible Markup Language, perhaps.

~~~
ljm
Maybe we make a sort of 'hyper' extension that comes with all kinds of baked
in behaviours, so that we don't have to implement that behaviour ourselves
when we deserialise it.

~~~
wvenable
That's a good idea. Maybe we need a series of standards but all based on some
kind of Standard Generalized markup.

------
jandrese
I'm sure the marketers made a big deal about it being "fully homegrown", but
the engineers were like "that's a ton of duplicated effort, lets start with an
open source browser and work from there."

It will be interesting to see if they keep merging in changes from the head of
the open source browser or if they continue to diverge over time.

~~~
test1235
chrome isn't open source, is it?

I'd be surprised if you found the red/yellow/green logo image in chromium

~~~
codetrotter
Most parts of Chrome are open source under the name Chromium. Some DRM stuff
in Chrome is not in Chromium and probably some other parts as well.

~~~
gsnedders
[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/lkgr/docs/c...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/lkgr/docs/chromium_browser_vs_google_chrome.md)
documents the differences on Linux (given it's the only platform which
regularly has both packaged). That does seem to miss the EME CDM, though (I'd
write a patch for it, but I'm a bit busy at the moment!).

------
jerf
"The company announced that in the latest round of fundraising it had raised a
cool 250 million yuan ($36) from investors that included government agencies."

Hmmm... I seem to have missed out on some super-Venezuela levels of
hyperinflation happening to the yuan at some point here. You think that'd be
the real news.

~~~
simula67
Clearly it was meant to be $36 million

~~~
duxup
In all fairness, it's not clear to me.

I really don't know currency conversions and maybe it is $360 million ....

~~~
swiley
I was reasonably sure it didn't actually.

------
EliRivers
As an aside, on the subject of writing a browser from scratch, I once had a
meeting with my technical director (many jobs past) in which the proposed
solution to some oddities in the Qt web browser widget of the day (this would
have been around early 2010s, using Qt 4.8.x, I think) was for us to write our
own. Apparently this was a basic, simple task that was commonly set in
introductory programming textbooks, and should take me a half-day or so to get
something basic running.

I pointed out that when Netscape decided to rewrite their browser, with all
the knowledge they had of how browsers work, they spent three years doing it,
and that was a decade and a half previously when the web was orders of
magnitude more simple.

I sometimes wonder how out of context he was. Or I was? What did he think a
browser was? Were we speaking at massive cross-purposes? Did he mean we should
grab some other web engine and find a way to use that? Even so, a half-day to
get something going? And just what introductory programming textbooks was he
reading?

Where was I going with this? Somewhere along the lines of how "write a
browser" clearly can mean massively different things to different people, or
maybe that there can be an enormous gulf of context and understanding there
somewhere. To this day, I still don't know. Never will.

~~~
jcranmer
There are essentially six pieces to a browser: a platform support library, a
graphics rendering platform, a networking layer, the HTML/CSS rendering, the
JS VM integration, and the browser shell on top of all of it.

Getting a first cut of really basic HTML rendering--essentially saying, here's
a string that's X color and Y font, display it--is probably doable in a day if
you have robust implementations of everything else. I have to imagine your
director thought that doing HTML rendering was "all" you'd have to do. Of
course, what makes building browsers especially hard is there is very tight
integration between all of these different components, so that you have to
maintain all of these pieces.

------
nailer
This isn't a misunderstanding, but a deliberate lie by RedCore. RedCore
actively and specifically stated they weren't based on Blink (Chrome's
rendering engine, derived from WebKit, derived from KHTML).

Here's an image from the announcement:

[https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_png/LB4LpUCAfNwtCCCtSYiaL9o2B7wy...](https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_png/LB4LpUCAfNwtCCCtSYiaL9o2B7wyIxdqYy4ibBLZfaxicia9icf7yF84eN4H2IallW1v5EibR70nUicNX9BR2Uv0y6ZDw/640?wx_fmt=png&wxfrom=5&wx_lazy=1)

------
phyalow
Source:
[http://yuanchuang.caijing.com.cn/2018/0816/4501631.shtml](http://yuanchuang.caijing.com.cn/2018/0816/4501631.shtml)

Classic - he mentions not wanting to rip off state funds and government
agencies multiple times. Thats exactly what he did though ;) I hope this isn't
the last anyone ever hears from Chen Benfeng - "The special expert of the
National Thousand Talents Program”.

------
dbllxr
First of all, good luck to the newly launched YC China.

I'm shocked with that much funding, this startup would choose to either or
both a) plagiarize, b) falsely advertise, and they didn't even do it well. I'd
say the effort is worth $36 without the million.

Both of these actions (plagiarism, fraud) have ethical and legal implications,
but it sounds like they are getting away with this by admitting to the public
what they did.. That makes me think the investors were already
aware/supportive of the whole stunt.

Is this what the startup scene is like in China? I certainly hope not.. but
still, it will take heck a lot more innovation from this company for people to
ever trust them again.

~~~
adventured
Someone did the same thing during the dotcom bubble with Microsoft's media
player. They pretended to have a new, revolutionary media player technology
(which was actually just a skin), and raised ~$18m on the back of that. It all
got vaporized, there never was a real product underneath.

I wouldn't chalk this particular instance up to anything more than loose
capital ending up in fraudster hands, as occasionally happens when it's
sloshing around to such a degree as it is these days.

------
tcper
Such frauds happened in China for many years, Chinese CPU, Chinese virtual
machine, people in China cheats government for money for reputation all over
there. Why they succeeded? Because all these frauds involved by officers in
government.

------
CSEThrowaway
> ...it includes important independent innovations

Meaning they send your browsing data to Chinese government agencies?

~~~
tehlike
Or have a backdoor to give full control

------
yawz
The title reminds me of a Silicon Valley (HBO) episode. I can imagine a big
whiteboard, and one of the product ideas on it is called _New Chrome_.

------
394549
Apparently the same is true of their "fully homegrown" 3G cellular network
standard. According to this [1] TD-SCDMA, is really an implementation of a
failed European standards proposal by Siemens.

[1] [https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-
rac/](https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/)

------
greatabel
Things is not as simple as it looks. Some Chinese say the founder of 'Redcore'
is officiallings. There cound be some collusion between the referee and the
athlete, when he get his fundraising.

------
c-smile
"The company announced that in the latest round of fundraising it had raised a
cool 250 million yuan ($36) from investors that included government agencies."

I want that too.

Just if someone else need their national browser too - I am here with my
Sciter ([https://sciter.com](https://sciter.com)) - it is an independent
implementation of HTML/CSS and universal Web browser can be made from it with
6-9 months ETA.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Oh so in essence this is so root of all those annoying ugly ass anti-virus UIs
that make it impossible to take them seriously in any way whatsoever. ;)

------
ForHackernews
What about Maxthon? I remember trying it back in the day and it was pretty
decent, better than IE of the time, anyway:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxthon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxthon)

~~~
est
Maxthon is based on IE.

~~~
ForHackernews
IIRC, it uses the Trident rendering engine, but all the browser UX and chrome
is custom. Most browsers are wrapping webkit today, does that make Opera and
Safari clones of Chrome? Not sure.

~~~
gumby
> does that make Opera and Safari clones of Chrome?

Umm, Webkit spun out of Safari, so that would make Chrome the "clone" of
Safari.

Which is rather your point. Chrome has made a _lot_ of changes to Webkit over
the years, and these days appears to be putting more effort into it than Apple
is.

~~~
ry4nolson
> Umm, Webkit spun out of Safari, so that would make Chrome the "clone" of
> Safari.

webkit/safari was spun off of KHTML/Konqueror, so would that make Safari a
"clone" of Konqueror

edit: spelling

~~~
gumby
Thanks, I'd forgotten the KHTML genesis, which is significant :-(

------
gritzko
So what? Chrome was based on WebKit (Safari), Safari was based on KHTML
(Konqueror).

~~~
afsina
This is not the same thing. What these guys doing is, for snatching some free
money from government, they hid facts.

------
ada1981
Does it surprise anyone that China would copy someone else’s IP?

~~~
ada1981
Downvotes because China has amazing respect for IP, or something else?

~~~
iforgotpassword
Down votes because "China" is a country of 1.4 billion people and not a single
hive minded unit. Also this was clearly a simple scam to rake in investor
money, they just told people what they wanted to hear so they'd throw money at
them. Has never happened in the west huh?

~~~
ada1981
Admittedly, I don’t know the details of this particular situation outside of
“yet another copyright / IP scam in China”.

Culture is bigger than any individual.

IP & Copyright are not part of Chinese history or culture and were largely
impositions from The west within the last 50 years.

Something like 90% of all business software running in China is stolen.

Additionally, Marxist ideas of collective ownership have left their mark.

[https://www.cio.com/article/2444480/it-
organization/understa...](https://www.cio.com/article/2444480/it-
organization/understanding-chinese-attitudes-towards-intellectual-property--ip
--rights.html)

------
whooshee
I have to say, most Chinese don't know this crap till today. So nobody would
say this is a fully homegrown web browser.

It's more like someone wanna wash their cash..

------
emodendroket
Still not as embarrassing a flop as Cuil.

~~~
huxflux
Might have been a flop, I agree on that. Yet here you are, mention it twelve
years later.

~~~
emodendroket
Yes, and this morning I was reading about Napoleon's Russian campaign, which
took place more than 200 years ago. Not sure what that proves.

------
cwperkins
Has China made anything original?

~~~
coldtea
Yes tons.

Besides this cliche was said for the US (back when it copied European
inventions in the 18th and 19th century to bootstrap its industry) and Japan
in the 60s and 70s (which started by copying western products).

Funny how those two places turned out...

------
crb002
Surprise level: 0

------
wemdyjreichert
[deleted]

~~~
readhn
You contradict yourself: at least 50%+ of things you purchase with your hard
earned money is made in china. I suppose you dont purchase anything useful
then.

------
Shorel
Just like new Opera and Vivaldi browsers.

~~~
detaro
Where did those claim to not be based on Chromium?

~~~
coldtea
Where did this one claim to not be based on Chromium? Homegrown can just mean
"the UI and core behavior parts" not not using any third party libs (including
rendering) at all.

~~~
kalleboo
> _At the same time, on the company 's official website, the Red Core browser
> was also described as "breaking the US monopoly, China's first independent
> innovation smart browser core."_

They clearly sold it as their own rendering engine, not just a UI shell.
Although I guess due to vague wording it wouldn't necessarily preclude being a
_fork_ of Blink.

------
dyukqu
Unrelated to the content, but it's kinda funny that they use .ist (TLD of
Istanbul) for a Shanghai web site.

~~~
huxflux
Makes sense since the name of the website is "Shanghaist". Shanghai + ist =
shanghai.ist.

------
jerkstate
So what, Google Chrome is a Konqueror clone

~~~
intsunny
That has never been true.

(I say this as a fan of KDE, and a user of Konq back in the KDE2x/Mandriva
days.)

------
barkingcat
How is this an issue? When Chrome started, it was based on webkit as well.
They've since forked webkit but they did come from a clone of an existing
engine.

~~~
wyattpeak
There's nothing wrong with forking a new browser off an existing one.

There's plenty wrong with taking money on the promise that you're developing a
browser from scratch, then doing the above.

------
zepto
Google chrome ‘found to be’ Apple Safari...

Apple Safari ‘found to be’ Konqueror...

------
readhn
So What? There is nothing new under the sun. Be glad you are good enough to be
copied and imitated.

C Also: copy 80% of a successful product and innovate/improve another (core)
20% is a very smart business approach.

Kudos an good luck to the Chinese for the attempt to disrupt monopoly in this
space.

~~~
emodendroket
I mean it's fine, except that they falsely claimed it was wholly original.

