I mean, if a handful guys at SerenityOS can write a web browser from scratch in just a few years surely Google can muster enough manpower to rewrite Chromium in Rust in a couple of years?
Interop is wasteful since there's a large discrepancy between C++ and Rust code. Trying to plug the holes will lead to an inferior product at great cost.
It does prove you can get something working. But it will take many more years to actually get to feature parity given the long tail of web APIs. It will also take many more years to be competitive on performance with existing engines. And even if you use a memory-safe language you'll be introducing many other bugs along the way.
This doesn't diminish the LadyBird browser in any way! It can still be useful for many people in many ways.
LadyBird only needs video and WebRTC to be fully functional for day-to-day use by non-power users.
WebSockets and WebGL would be nice too, but that will take some time. Most other API's are cruft, such as WebUSB (a Google contraption that more or less ignores security).
Because I agree.
Simply rewrite the core of a browser that has been in development since 1998. Easy.