April 3, 2013

Google announced Blink rendering engine

On April 3, 2013, Google announced BlinkGoogle's rendering engine forked from WebKit — powers Chrome and many Chromium-based browsers. — a fork of WebKitApple's open-source browser engine — powers Safari and historically influenced Chrome's fork. that would power ChromeGoogle's web browser — built on Chromium and the most widely used browser worldwide. and Opera, splitting the open-source browser engine landscape.

What it was for

Blink (browser engine)BlinkGoogle's rendering engine forked from WebKit — powers Chrome and many Chromium-based browsers. let Google iterate faster than WebKitApple's open-source browser engine — powers Safari and historically influenced Chrome's fork.'s multi-vendor governance — dropping vendor prefixes, changing architecture, and eventually dominating ChromiumGoogle's open-source browser project — the foundation for Chrome, Edge, and other modern browsers.-based browsers. SafariApple's web browser — built on WebKit for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. kept WebKitApple's open-source browser engine — powers Safari and historically influenced Chrome's fork.; ChromeGoogle's web browser — built on Chromium and the most widely used browser worldwide., EdgeMicrosoft's Chromium-based web browser — the default on Windows, replacing Internet Explorer., Opera, and most mobile browsers adopted BlinkGoogle's rendering engine forked from WebKit — powers Chrome and many Chromium-based browsers..

Companies

  • Google

Why it's here

BlinkGoogle's rendering engine forked from WebKit — powers Chrome and many Chromium-based browsers. fork was the inflection point toward ChromiumGoogle's open-source browser project — the foundation for Chrome, Edge, and other modern browsers. engine monoculture.

Why it mattered

It ended the WebKitApple's open-source browser engine — powers Safari and historically influenced Chrome's fork.-only era outside FirefoxMozilla's open-source browser — championed web standards and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance. and defined modern browser internals.

What it solved

Google needed engine freedom to ship multi-process architecture and rapid web platform changes.

Media

  • Blink (browser engine)
    ImageBlink (browser engine)

    AG projects, GPL, via Wikimedia Commons

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