
Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine - kolistivra
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/google-going-its-own-way-forking-webkit-rendering-engine/
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tgandrews
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 browser
per se - it was revolutionary when it was released, MS just killed the team.
The chance that enterprises will stick with Chrome is very unlikely.

As it stands at the moment, the only downside is the duplicated development
between the Safari and Chrome teams. Webkit will suffer, but the web won't.
Apple don't care enough, the web isn't the top of their priority list.

If anything, the iOS monopoly of mobile web traffic (in the first world) is a
problem which certainly isn't changed by this fork.

That's my two pennies worth.

~~~
mtgx
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.

~~~
camus
and firefox is the IE6 of firefox os ... what you are saying doesnt make
sense. A mobile doesnt have to accept multiple browsers. Can you run chrome on
WP8 ? no.

~~~
VoxPelli
That's somewhat different though because the browser and the OS is the same in
Firefox OS so you would have to switch the entire OS - which in itself
shouldn't be a problem once the app API:s has been finalized and standardized
and implemented by others like Chrome OS (and since Google puts a big
emphasize on standardization in their Blink announcement it is actually pretty
likely that such an implementation will eventually happen)

When it comes to Firefox OS it is more of a question of whether phone
manufacturers will allow you to switch OS on your device or not, something
that eg. FairPhone has been said to be investigating, wanting to ship their
device with an option of either Android or Firefox OS.

But as long as Firefox OS' API:s gets standardized and implemented by others
Firefox OS can't ever turn into an IE6 because there is nothing in Firefox OS
that keeps you from switching to something else, which the apps in iOS do.

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doe88
> Google also argues that the decision will introduce greater diversity into
> the browser ecosystem and might mitigate concerns that the mobile Web in
> particular was becoming a WebKit monoculture.

Ahah so much hypocrisy condensed in this sentence. Yeah it's constraining to
share code and have compile time #defines but if every vendor did the same
there wouldn't be any common project.

~~~
mikewest
The web is the common project, right? We're all working together to put
together powerful and performant windows into the web, and we work together at
places like the W3C and WhatWG to construct a common vision of what that
means.

Diversity in implementation is a great way of hammering out the exact contours
of the standards that govern the common project...

~~~
coldtea
> _The web is the common project, right? We're all working together to put
> together powerful and performant windows into the web, and we work together
> at places like the W3C and WhatWG to construct a common vision of what that
> means._

No, we (the companies) don't.

We work to get web features that we can leverage.

If we can get away with them being adopted by everybody but solely controlled
by us, it's all the merrier. If we can get away with keeping some features to
ourselves as a competitive advantage ditto.

If we can push our agenda and standards instead of collaborating and iterating
faster on common ones, that's great too.

We (the companies) could care less about the web, in any way in which it
doesn't affect our bottom line.

In fact, if we have to stall the Web's progress to protect some of our own
investments and offerings, we're all for it.

Also, if we have to stall the Web's progress just to avoid some competitor
getting his stuff adopted and standardized first, we're all for it.

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

~~~
coldtea
> _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 great care to avoid ever working for them._

Well, since you already work for Google, it's understandable you seeing this
as silly and thinking they are all for open and the web's progress.

I don't think that's the general perception people have of Google though --
nor that it is correct.

~~~
thedragon4453
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.

------
hp50g
This reads like:

"We're not sharing our stuff anymore as it's costing too much".

A the risk of sounding like a paranoid nutbag, with stuff like NaCl, SPDY,
Dart etc, it sounds like Google have their own agenda.

~~~
baddox
Everything is still going to be open source.

[http://www.chromium.org/blink/developer-faq#TOC-Is-this-
goin...](http://www.chromium.org/blink/developer-faq#TOC-Is-this-going-to-be-
open-source-)

~~~
coldtea
Open source doesn't mean much when it comes to standards.

It's all about who has control of the codebase. If you need to fork or kiss
Google's ass to implement changes to it, then it's not really open.

To put it better, it might still be "open source" but it's not a community or
a multi-company project.

~~~
coldtea
> _So any repositories that don't have public commits enabled are 'not really
> open'? A ludicrous suggestion._

WTF, have you even read my comment before answering?

I explicitly said that those: "might still be open source but it's not a
community or a multi-company project".

And I never said anything about "public commits" being necessary for something
being open, if by that you mean anybody to be able commit arbitrarily.

Restricted commit access is perfectly fine. What I said is not "really open"
are projects tightly controlled by a company and mainly developed by its paid
employees.

Those are not really open EVEN if they have publicly available source code.
Nothing "ludicrous" about it.

~~~
aidos
Well, you said:

> If you need to fork or kiss Google's ass to implement changes to it, then
> it's not really open.

You're right - you can't be sure to get your changes added to the codebase,
but that's not to say it's not open. Hey, at least the codebase is there for
you to fork and enjoy. It's not totally open (maybe, we don't really know that
yet - you're just assuming it won't be) - it's certainly not closed like many
others however.

------
sukuriant
A number of people were complaining about how not enough common
implementations on the web was a bad thing; and how everyone using webkit
would lead to complacency. Google forking webkit to make it its own might be
just enough to keep them all different enough to keep standards going :)

------
darkchasma
WebKit has prevented google from pulling an IE6, so this effectively frees
them to eff it all up.

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cnlwsu
nugget at the end: "there won't be any -blink or -chrome CSS prefixes; like
Mozilla, all new experimental features will require developers to enable them
in the browser's options page"

------
msoad
My understanding is that Dart VM will be in Chrome soon.

~~~
mikewest
<http://www.chromium.org/blink#new-features> has some detail about how we plan
to add features to the platform. We're certainly hoping to be pretty
transparent about how things get into Chromium.

~~~
itafroma
That section states that you will make exceptions against compatibility with
competing implementations under the following conditions:

1\. That you propose a draft specification

2\. That you're willing to discuss it with other implementors

3\. That you've exhausted all other options

So let's take the example of Dart, and let's say every other browser engine
says "no" to Dart. This policy seems to allow you to act unilaterally, against
current interoperability, in this case as long as you put some indeterminate
amount of effort to convince other implementors.

Is that a correct reading of it? If so, what good is the rest of the policy
about striving for compatibility with other engines when you've given yourself
an out when consensus doesn't fall your way?

------
jevinskie
Will this help unshackle WebKit2 development (an alternative to Chrome's
multiprocess architecture)? It seems to have stagnated for quite some time.

------
kapranoff
Some people here are confused about the business side of making a browser for
Google. I even saw mentions that Google Chrome is just a good will project to
make the Web a better palce.

While that is partially true, Google Chrome also has a very strong business
strategy behind it.

Right now it is the main distribution channel for Google Search. Every
download of the browser is converted (with a probability, of course) to more
searches or to a switch-over from another search engine.

For quite a long time (several years) search engine quality has not been
selling itself. Many people do not notice any real difference between
Bing/Baidu/Yandex/Seznam and Google.

Google invented search distribution with Google Toolbar (which was a
tremendous success from business side) and right now Google Chrome is the new
Google Toolbar. One of the main KPIs for Google Chrome product is Google
Search market share. Specifically they directly optimize for Google Search
share from inside Google Chrome which when multiplied by the share of the
browser converts into money.

Just wanted to clarify things, sorry if not mentioning Blink made this comment
an off-topic one.

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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.

------
smallegan
I like competition but I hate having to test for yet another engine. Really
hoping that developing for webkit will still result in well rendered
sites/apps on blink.

------
EGreg
Noo! Why can't we have one, nice open source target? At least I hope they all
support the standards.

------
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.

~~~
Drakim
They forked it because they want to take the code in another direction. They
aren't being any worse open source citizen than anybody else that forks open
source.

------
eluos
They are removing the <blink></blink> tag?!? PITCHFORKS OUT

------
fuck_google
A Short Translation from Bullshit to English of Selected Portions of the
Google Chrome Blink Developer FAQ: <http://prng.net/blink-faq.html>

~~~
ksec
Some are true, but most are over the top.

------
JamesPDX
Google just realizes it cannot pretend to be a nice guy when the world no
longer spins around it. So much for "do no evil"...

~~~
ok_craig
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?

~~~
zobzu
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 moment,
we're the masters of the game here, why the fuck can't we just dictate the
rules? it's _our_ browser that's mainly running this."

Well, now, there will be zero barrier to this. Not even disagreements.

So.. it is a quite different thing indeed.

The other intents Google have are good, but unfortunately, I'm near certain
the REAL interest is the one I and others listed: CONTROL. FULL CONTROL.
Things will inevitably go that way. Even if some devs working on Chromium are
fooled right now. There is no way you don't get this without making Chromium
an entity fully separated from Google, and that ain't happening.

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

~~~
zobzu
forking is by nature for taking control. not sure why I'm even replying. that
like saying the fire burns.

the difference is the leverage over people, programmers, website, and other
companies google has by having this control - due to the marketshare of
chrome.

