Google Forking WebKit to Create New Web Rendering Engine for Chrome

Google announced today that the company is forking the WebKit rendering engine to create its own web rendering engine called 'Blink'. Google had been the using Apple-initiated WebKit project to power its Chrome web browser. Future versions, however, will now be based on this new system.

Google is now free to make changes to its rendering engine with less complexity and bureaucracy than when it was saving its changes to Webkit. The company posted this on its FAQ explaining why it wanted to create a new engine:

The main reason is that Chromium uses a different multi-process architecture than other WebKit-based browsers. So, over the years, supporting multiple architectures has led to increasing complexity for both the WebKit and Chromium communities, slowing down the collective pace of innovation.

With the change, Google has set Chrome and Apple's Safari on their own paths. Webkit was originally created by Apple as a fork to the KHTML rendering engine. Apple took interest in developing it when launching Safari for the Mac, and it now powers Safari for iOS, as well.

WebKit has been heavily adopted with over 20 companies now contributing to the project. Google and Apple, however, have remained the most active contributors to the open-source project.

commits
In fact, Google has been the most active contributor of WebKit in the recent years. This graph from Bitergia (above) shows Google's increasing number of "commits" to WebKit over the years. Google's efforts will now be directed at 'Blink'. Apple has made no public comments about the news.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
Magic Mouse Green

What to Expect From the Magic Mouse 3

Saturday March 29, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple is reportedly working on a new Magic Mouse. Below, we recap what to expect. The two key rumors for the Magic Mouse 3 so far include a relocated charging port, along with a more ergonomic design. It was briefly rumored that the Magic Mouse 3 would also feature voice control, but that was misinterpreted information. Relocated Charging Port While the Magic Mouse switched from...
top stories 2025 03 29

Top Stories: WWDC 2025 Announced, iPhone 17 Pro and iOS 19 Rumors, and More

Saturday March 29, 2025 6:00 am PDT by
Apple's big developer event is a little over two months away, and rumors about what we can expect to see in Apple's next major operating system updates are becoming increasingly frequent. A public release of iOS 18.4 is also imminent with a number of updates and improvements, although we won't be getting the major Apple Intelligence Siri upgrades that had reportedly been planned for this...
iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Expected Next Week - Here Are the Release Notes

Friday March 28, 2025 2:01 pm PDT by
With the second release candidate of iOS 18.4 that Apple seeded out today, the company finally provided us with release notes that give a full rundown on what to expect. There's an Apple Vision Pro app, new Apple Intelligence features for notifications and additional language support, plus an Apple News Food feature for Apple News+ subscribers, and several updates that should improve the...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature Homescreen

Six Things to Know About Apple's Upcoming Foldable iPhone

Friday March 28, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We've been hearing rumors about a foldable iPhone for almost a decade now, but it looks like we might finally see the device come to fruition in 2026. We're going to be waiting many more months for the foldable iPhone, but so far we're hearing good things. Apple wants to make it creaseless. It's taken Apple multiple years to design a foldable iPhone that it's satisfied with because Apple ...
iOS 19 visionOS UI Elements

Apple Codename Provides Clue About iOS 19's Rumored New Design

Sunday March 30, 2025 6:40 am PDT by
Multiple sources have claimed that iOS 19 will introduce a new design with more translucent buttons, menus, notification banners, and more, and there is now another clue that points towards this glass-like appearance. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today said the new design project is codenamed "Solarium" internally. A solarium is a room with glass walls that allow in plenty of sunlight, so this...
ipad pro 2024

Gurman: New iPad Pro and MacBook Pro Models With M5 Chips to Launch Later This Year

Sunday March 30, 2025 6:06 am PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPad Pro models with the M5 chip will "launch this year," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the new iPad Pro models have progressed to an "advanced testing" stage, and he expects mass production of the devices to begin in the second half of this year. If that timeframe is met, the new iPad Pro models could launch...
macOS Sequoia Feature

Apple Releases macOS Sequoia 15.4 With Mail Categorization and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:04 am PDT by
Apple today released macOS Sequoia 15.4, the fourth major update to the macOS Sequoia operating system that launched in September. macOS Sequoia 15.4 comes two months after the launch of macOS Sequoia 15.3. Mac users can download the ‌‌macOS Sequoia‌‌ update through the Software Update section of System Settings. It is available for free on all Macs able to run macOS 15. With...

Top Rated Comments

Chaszmyr Avatar
157 months ago
So much for the golden age of web standards.
Score: 44 Votes (Like | Disagree)
komodrone Avatar
157 months ago
well then...FORK YOU.
Score: 37 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Karma*Police Avatar
157 months ago
Sounds like another attempt by Google to control the keys to the Internet using open source as a veil to their true intentions. It reminds me of when they tried to hijack the video standard with WebM.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
maxosx Avatar
157 months ago
This is a good move on Google's part. It will bring enhanced, richer results to all. The mentality at Google is improve, improve, improve. While certainly not perfect, I give them credit for a positive attitude and willingness to take risks.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Bubba Satori Avatar
157 months ago
Perfect, this allows Google to implement their own codecs and create their own IE disaster.

Will that be different than the Safari disaster?
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dannys1 Avatar
157 months ago
Those thinking this is a good thing obviously don't design web sites or know how hard it is to comply with multiple web standards. This just creates more browser fragmentation.

It doesn't improve anything for the end user as solid web designs program features for the least supporter browser up. If IE, Safari, Firefox all do something Chrome doesn't, it wont be used.

This means more of a headache for web designs, it means less people pulling in one direction which was what was so great about webkit and it means Google going against open source really and fragmenting it for their own gain - probably to serve their customers….the advertisers.

So now we're going to have to IE, Webkit, Blink, Servo, Mozilla and any old browsers to keep multiple differing HTML5 standards for…great, this sounds like it'll be fun!
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)