[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.

[codemac]

I was all worried about this being the beginning of a proprietary browser, Google owning both a majority of user services and a majority of their browser tech stack. Both hidden in some proprietary garden.

Then I stopped sucking and looked up stuff from the article.

Blink is a part of the chromium project, and is equivalently open[fn:0]. So that means it's equivalent to any other open source fork.

Mailing list drama, duplicating technical work, etc will happen but hopefully this will contribute to having even more high quality open web implementations available.

[fn:0] http://www.chromium.org/blink/developer-faq#TOC-Is-this-goin...

[billions]

Webkit was the only thing the mobile web had that apps did not: a mostly un-fragmented codebase. Now developers will have to test their mobile web-apps against even more browsers reducing time-to-market efficiency. Hopefully competition will lead to faster improvements by top players (Google), but the more likely scenario is the least incentivized player (Apple) will drag their feet re-creating an IE6 scenario where one browser will slow mass adaption of standards.

[joe_fishfish]

Mobile web developers should already be used to testing their work on multiple different devices anyway. The deployed versions of WebKit differ quite significantly across the myriad of mobile devices on the market, and WebKit is just the layout engine anyway. It doesn't run JS or talk directly to the network stacks, and it isn't responsible for any GPU acceleration that may or may not be available.

If you're doing anything more complicated than serving static HTML and images to mobile devices you will already need to test on as many different devices as is feasible for you. It's basically unheard of for something to work across all WebKit based browsers just because your CI is telling you it works OK in desktop Chrome.

[mehrzad]

My problem with the Webkit monopoly was that it made it harder to use a FOSS browser. Webkit Nightly and Chromium are both nightly browsers which isn't good for the majority of people. Firefox is FOSS, but if Webkit took over, it would be hurt, as it has been.

[AnthonyMouse]

Chromium as packaged by most Linux distributions is not a "nightly build" sort of a thing. It's only a hassle if you run a non-FOSS operating system without a package manager, and in that case having to run Chrome instead of Chromium is the least of your issues re: FOSS.

[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.

[Cthulhu_]

Actually, the issue is not "no choice in rendering engine", the issue (with IE6) was "a shitty rendering engine" - I for one don't care if Safari / Webkit remains the only rendering engine on iOS for eternity, as long as webpages work and look well. Because that's all that matters to me, as a consumer.

[jarek]

IE6 wasn't shitty when it was released, it was shitty after a couple of years of no updates. If a substantial amount of users stays on older iOS releases, you will see the same problems with old Safari versions. (As you might already with the default browser on Android 2.3, for example, though availability of e.g. Opera, including the new Webkit Opera, helps by providing an alternative there. There won't be new alternative engines for old iOS versions.)

[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.

[RyanMcGreal]

> A mobile doesnt have to accept multiple browsers.

My phone is running Android 4.1.1 and the default browser is good, but my preference is for mobile Firefox 20.0, which I use instead. I'm glad my mobile accepts multiple browsers, because it allows me to choose the application I want to use.

[mtgx]

That's my point. You should be able to run other browsers on WP8 and Windows RT, too.

What if iOS or WP8 had Android's market share? Do you really think that would be good for the web? We just happen to be lucky to have Android, an OS that does allow other browser engines on it, to dominate right now.

[gurkendoktor]

Isn't this contradictory? If a significant/relevant chunk of people use WebKit, and WebKit development lags behind Blink (and the others), then how will this not affect the web?

[sukuriant]

The idea is that, Webkit will have to keep up with the innovations in Blink, and maybe even try to innovate themselves, to maintain marketshare.

[AnthonyMouse]

This is assuming that Apple cares very much about browser market share. They're not really a web company, they just need a decent browser to include with their OS. Nothing stops them from switching to Blink (or Gecko) and letting someone else spend the money building a competitive browser that they can just include for free.

[ams6110]

Apple cared enough to start the WebKit project. Though admittedly, ALL the browsers for Mac OS X in those days sucked.

[AnthonyMouse]

And that's the point. They care to the point that their operating systems continue to have competitive browsers available... but now they do. Why keep throwing money at it once you have what you need when others are willing to pay in your stead?

[gurkendoktor]

Just like IE6 had to catch up to stay in the market, and thus could not hurt the web? :) And installing an alternative browser was easier on Windows machines than on mobile devices.

It doesn't even matter who will be the leader - if Apple leads, Android users will lose; if Google leads, Apple users will lose. Except if people start to buy smartphones based on the HTML rendering engine.

[hyperpape]

Except the assumption here is that improvements must necessarily be slower. But that's not necessarily true: collaboration between Chromium and WebKit was already incredibly problematic and was definitely slowing people down (http://infrequently.org/2013/04/probably-wrong/).

So there's a tradeoff--you're splitting people's efforts, and that's bad, but you're also removing pain points that slow down development.

[gurkendoktor]

Ah, gotcha. So what I'll mourn for is not the world of four days ago - but the world before Chromium and WebKit2 had split in the first place. :)

[gcr]

Webkit's done plenty of innovating, haven't they?

[Achshar]

That was with help of google. Google had incentiv to work on webkit, not anymore. Now webkit folk are on their own.

[rimantas]

Apple was doing enough innovating befor Google joined in: canvas element, CSS animations, transitions and transforms, etc., etc.

[Millennium]

He didn't say the Web wouldn't be affected; he said it wouldn't suffer. And it won't, because it forces the WebKit (and Gecko) folks to keep up with Blink, and the Blink folks to keep up with their keeping up. Everybody wins.

[smrtinsert]

What does Dolphin use? I don't even bother opening Firefix Chrome on Android, they just aren't up to Dolphins level.

[fpgeek]

Extensively modified WebKit, I believe (at least compared to the system WebKit on Android). That being said, given that their customized engine targets Android, I suspect it is more likely than not that they'll switch to Blink.