Google Inc. (GOOG), Apple Inc. (AAPL) Divorce Over WebKit in a Blink

Published on April 3, 2013 at 6:06 pm by David Woodburn in News

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has always been about open-source. Its Android operating system is an oper-source OS, which many companies use to manipulate for their varying needs – which makes Android a very scalable and flexible OS and is part of the reason why it is so popular with many devices and manufacturers. One of the open-source platforms that it has used for ears has been WebKit, which Google and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) have used for their respective Chrome and Safari browsers.

WebKit is a software code program that drives processing of Web pages in browsers, turning the code’s instructions into a Web page that is visible on a computer screen. But Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), which has in some ways collaborated with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in manipulating WebKit code for heir various browser interests, has now decided to cut anchor from Apple and WebKit, announcing this week that Google is launching its own browser engine software infrastructure called Blink.

“We’re confident this will allow us to move faster and allow the rest of the WebKit community to move faster, which ultimately will allow the Web to move faster,” said Linus Upson, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) vice president of engineering for Chrome.

From a technical perspective, why would Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) move from WebKit to Blink, when the two will start fundamentally similar? It has to do with what is possible with Blink – flexibility. “Chromium has a very different multiprocess architecture than the other WebKit-based browsers,” said Alex Komoroske of the Google Open Web Platform team. “It would be great for security and stability and performance if we could have iframes embedded in pages be separate process. But it would require lot of change that would really disrupt the rest of the WebKit community.”

While Blink will be similar with WebKit to start with, as Blink matures as its own platform, it will become very different to where it could be a siloed addition to the Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) infrastructure. “Over time they’ll evolve in different directions, which will make it harder to share code,” Komoroske said. “It’ll be increasingly difficult to share a straightforward patch.”

Google Inc (GOOG) What do you think? Does this Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) divorce benefit web browsers and web surfers? Can it deelop more efficiency across the Web, as Google claims? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.