Google says Chrome will switch from WebKit to Blink in roughly 10 weeks

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 5 Apr 2013

When Google announced that they’re going to fork WebKit and start writing their own rendering engine called Blink, one of the biggest unknowns was when the new code would land in release software. Now, thanks to a 30 minute video that I didn’t watch from start to finish, but The Next Web did, there’s official confirmation that Blink will come to Chrome version 28.

Considering that Google releases a new version of Chrome every six weeks, and the current version number is 26, that means we’re roughly 10 weeks away from getting a taste of Blink. Hopefully it’ll be faster, but chances are it isn’t going to markedly different from what’s already installed on your computer.

Why is Google forking WebKit in the first place? Some people will say it’s all about politics. That Apple controls WebKit, and it makes Google uncomfortable. Alex Russell, a Google employee, penned a great blog post detailing the ridiculous amount of cruft that he has to deal with when working on Chrome. He says Blink will let him do a week’s worth of work in a single day.

Let’s just wait and see what happens to best browser currently in existence.