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Comment by dm2 | Hacker News Reader

While I'm very appreciative of the contributions Apple made to the web with WebKit, most of the recent innovations and upkeep has been thanks to Google.

What is the future of WebKit now that Blink has been introduced? Will Apple spend considerable resources keeping an open-source project at the bleeding-edge considering it doesn't really make them any money? Should Safari just be scrapped? It only accounts for < 4% of the market share of non-mobile browsers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(layout_engine)

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I think Apple is pretty well set on mobile browsing as the future growth market. They don't seem to mind cannibalizing desktop sales for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches. In mobile browsing, Safari has ~60% market share. As long as mobile browsing keeps growing, Safari will remain an important asset for Apple.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...

I'm not sure I trust that site, they also claim that IE had 56% of the Desktop market share during 2013, while all other reports claim to have very different data: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Here is StatCounter for Mobile for the last 6 months, the iPhone browser with 23%: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201207-...

You just posted the netshare link again instead of a StatCounter one. StatCounter's Mobile OS shows iOS at about 24% last month. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201207-20130...

But I don't think they count iPads and other tablets as "mobile." Their Mobile Browser chart listed iPhone and iPod touch separately and didn't list iPads at all. Mobile Screen Resolutions doesn't include iPad resolutions. Browser Versions (Partially Combined) has a separate entry just for Safari iPad (which actually exceeds Safari 6.0 and Safari 5.1, combined).

WebKit did fine before Google ever joined the project, and I'm sure it will do fine with them gone.

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