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
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
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
- ImageBlink (browser engine)
AG projects, GPL, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- Google Chrome beta releasedSeptember 2, 2008
- WebKit open-sourced by AppleJune 7, 2005
- Opera 15 on Chromium releasedJuly 2, 2013