WebKit was “obvious solution” for Chrome

Posted on 8 Sep 2008 at 10:52

Google’s new Chrome web browser would not have been possible without the WebKit technology developed in a large part by Apple.

In a posting on the Chromium blog, Google’s Darin Fisher pays tribute to the “excellent work” of the WebKit team.

“WebKit became the obvious solution after talking to fellow engineers working on the Android project,” he wrote. “They were already using WebKit (as it is a great option for mobile devices), and they trumpeted its speed, flexibility and simplicity. We routinely heard comments like ‘It's so easy to hack!’ and ‘It didn't take me long to find my way around the code base.’”

They also found it to be very fast.

“We were blown away by how fast WebKit could render pages!”

All of which would seem to matter little for Mac users — at least not until there is an OS X version of Chrome — were it not for fact that Google is now an active player in the ongoing development of WebKit.

“We are busily working to contribute our modifications back upstream to WebKit,” Fisher wrote. “We are excited about all the cool things coming in WebKit and can't wait to start helping out in a big way.”

Author: Simon Aughton

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