How Chrome Changed the Web Overnight | Hacker News Reader

How Chrome Changed the Web Overnight

webmonkey.com

13 pointsbootload11 comments

Can we all say hype? Chrome hasn't changed anything yet. More importantly, it comes with one unique and great advance - the fact that each tab is a separate process.

V8, beyond the hype, doesn't seem to do any better than the upcoming javascript engines from Apple and Mozilla. It may be an order of magnitude better than what is currently production, but it's in the same ballpark as what Firefox and Safari will have soon.

Chrome is wonderful and will probably be my default browser for a while, but it's evolutionary, not revolutionary (except for the per-tab processes). It will push the web forward faster as Google has some great minds working on it and it is very nicely polished and efficient. It just isn't game-changing or revolutionary - it's a nice evolutionary step that's a wonderful program to use.

Again. Sometimes an order of magnitude is game-changing.

There are articles about people long ago trying to cram in features into their word processor that nowadays are trivial even in shell that were immensely complex because of less RAM or CPU.

Alot of the stuff thats different I agree is evolutionary, but Chrome has two features: "fast" and "faster". It appears that V8 doesn't blow everyone else out of the water compared to some prototypes. That's fine. Order of magnitude faster than everything else in production is game-changing.

The thing is that it is NOT an order of magnitude faster than other javascript engines in production.

The Dromaeo test suite shows the production Safari 3.1.2 on Windows beats Chrome. Wow, Safari before the huge JS upgrade beating Chrome on the Windows platform! The SunSpider suite shows Chrome to be around 40% faster than Safari and 25% faster than Firefox 3, but on par with Safari 4.0 and only a tad faster than Firefox 3.1.

In fact, the only thing that shows V8 as being so amazing is Google's own test which is basically a lot of recursion (akin to Microsoft's surveys that show people love Vista).

Google has a good product, but it isn't an order of magnitude better than what exists today and is on par with what is coming in the future. Heck, pull a nightly of the new Mozilla TraceMonkey engine and you'll see that TraceMonkey handily beats V8 (after 2 months of development rather than 2 years). Oh, and Chrome isn't in production.

Different processes will be game changing. V8 just won't be.

Spot on. Chrome makes some interesting architectural choices, but there's nothing so innovative about it to justify all the froth. If Google's name wasn't attached to it, Chrome wouldn't receive half the attention it's getting.

I didn't notice anything changed about my web when I turned it on this morning. :(

And everyone's opinion of google with it's evil EULA. I just hate that EULA, it's the most evil thing i've ever seen, it makes look Hitler as a well intentioned fellow [I'm exhagerating greatly here, please take no offense, i just wanted to make a point].

Google hasn't changed their EULA for the spanish version and i wonder if this has happened for the many other supported languages.

It's distributed under BSD license, no EULA can screw that. Every attempt at it could be averted by getting the BSD licensed code and making own builds without any strings attached.

That infamous EULA was intented for other Google services, and was mistakenly used for the browser. Supposedly (I haven't actually read it) it was already changed/clarified.

True, but that is not true for other languages other than english. At least the spanish EULA is still the same.

So if i build google chrome by myself without any changes whatsoever and use the product of my build do i unbind myself from the EULA?

Yes, the code is available under the BSD license, which is basically a "do whatever you want" license. You can download it, you can build it, you can redistribute it. You can even rebrand it and start selling it, although it wouldn't make you the most popular person around the internets.

It's the binary that was (and as you noted, is) distributed under that unfortunate EULA. For me it is really clear that they did not intend to have such an EULA, with the BSD licensed code, it REALLY makes no sense.

BTW, a somewhat similar issue struck Firefox too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranding

A trademark/branding issue resulted in Debian Linux having a browser called Iceweasel instead of Firefox, built from the same sources.

Given they've admitted the error and committed to a fix, your level of hate is misplaced. It's like hating someone for a typo.

True. What worries me is that the EULA for the spanish version is still the same (and google is FAST about fixing their mistakes, hope they fix the EULA for the non english versions).

But what you say is true, my level of hate is misplaced. I've been reading about that and i made a very wrong judgment.

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