Comment by nieve
2 years ago
Sorry if this was a joke and I didn't spot it. Chrome was based on WebKit which was itself based on KHTML if memory serves. Chromebooks are based on a version of that outside engine running on top of Linux which they also didn't create.
It's not a joke. Just because they didn't write everything from scratch (Chromebooks also are made with hard disks that Google didn't create from directly mining raw materials and performing all intermediate manufacturing stages) doesn't mean they haven't released successful products that they didn't just buy in.
They used the KDE-derived HTML renderer, sure, but they wrote the whole Javascript runtime from scratch, which was what gave it the speed they used as a selling point.
Chrome as a project was still a Google thing even if they used Konqueror's rendering library.
The process model was the novel selling point at the time from my memory [1].
[1] https://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/
The faster javascript runtime was what made it a success IMO.
The leveraging their search monopoly to push it and paying other software to sneak it into installs is what made it a success.
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Webkit is not a browser.
If you have a Mac you can download the Webkit browser here: https://webkit.org/downloads/
Which uses the WebKit engine and is kindof a showcase for Safari, granted, but it still exists as distinct browser under that name.