

How Chrome Changed the Web Overnight - bootload
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/How_Chrome_Changed_the_Web_Overnight

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mdasen
Can we all say hype? Chrome hasn't changed anything yet. More importantly, it
comes with one unique and great advance - the fact that each tab is a separate
process.

V8, beyond the hype, doesn't seem to do any better than the upcoming
javascript engines from Apple and Mozilla. It may be an order of magnitude
better than what is currently production, but it's in the same ballpark as
what Firefox and Safari will have soon.

Chrome is wonderful and will probably be my default browser for a while, but
it's evolutionary, not revolutionary (except for the per-tab processes). It
will push the web forward faster as Google has some great minds working on it
and it is very nicely polished and efficient. It just isn't game-changing or
revolutionary - it's a nice evolutionary step that's a wonderful program to
use.

~~~
litewulf
Again. Sometimes an order of magnitude _is_ game-changing.

There are articles about people long ago trying to cram in features into their
word processor that nowadays are trivial even in shell that were immensely
complex because of less RAM or CPU.

Alot of the stuff thats different I agree is evolutionary, but Chrome has two
features: "fast" and "faster". It appears that V8 doesn't blow everyone else
out of the water compared to some prototypes. That's fine. Order of magnitude
faster than everything else in production is game-changing.

~~~
mdasen
The thing is that it is NOT an order of magnitude faster than other javascript
engines in production.

The Dromaeo test suite shows the production Safari 3.1.2 on Windows beats
Chrome. Wow, Safari before the huge JS upgrade beating Chrome on the Windows
platform! The SunSpider suite shows Chrome to be around 40% faster than Safari
and 25% faster than Firefox 3, but on par with Safari 4.0 and only a tad
faster than Firefox 3.1.

In fact, the only thing that shows V8 as being so amazing is Google's own test
which is basically a lot of recursion (akin to Microsoft's surveys that show
people love Vista).

Google has a good product, but it isn't an order of magnitude better than what
exists today and is on par with what is coming in the future. Heck, pull a
nightly of the new Mozilla TraceMonkey engine and you'll see that TraceMonkey
handily beats V8 (after 2 months of development rather than 2 years). Oh, and
Chrome isn't in production.

Different processes will be game changing. V8 just won't be.

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tstegart
I didn't notice anything changed about my web when I turned it on this
morning. :(

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rubentopo
And everyone's opinion of google with it's evil EULA. I just hate that EULA,
it's the most evil thing i've ever seen, it makes look Hitler as a well
intentioned fellow [I'm exhagerating greatly here, please take no offense, i
just wanted to make a point].

Google hasn't changed their EULA for the spanish version and i wonder if this
has happened for the many other supported languages.

~~~
kxt
It's distributed under BSD license, no EULA can screw that. Every attempt at
it could be averted by getting the BSD licensed code and making own builds
without any strings attached.

That infamous EULA was intented for other Google services, and was mistakenly
used for the browser. Supposedly (I haven't actually read it) it was already
changed/clarified.

~~~
rubentopo
True, but that is not true for other languages other than english. At least
the spanish EULA is still the same.

So if i build google chrome by myself without any changes whatsoever and use
the product of my build do i unbind myself from the EULA?

~~~
kxt
Yes, the code is available under the BSD license, which is basically a "do
whatever you want" license. You can download it, you can build it, you can
redistribute it. You can even rebrand it and start selling it, although it
wouldn't make you the most popular person around the internets.

It's the binary that was (and as you noted, is) distributed under that
unfortunate EULA. For me it is really clear that they did not intend to have
such an EULA, with the BSD licensed code, it REALLY makes no sense.

BTW, a somewhat similar issue struck Firefox too:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranding>

A trademark/branding issue resulted in Debian Linux having a browser called
Iceweasel instead of Firefox, built from the same sources.

