Reuven Cohen's Blog

There has been a lot of excitment around the early announcement that Google will be releasing a new open source web browser on September 2 called Chrome.

Slashdot as well a few other blogs are saying the new browser will be based on Webkit, the same basic engine as Mac OS X’s Safari. Also interesting that last week Google renewed their agreement as firefox's default search engine, just in time for the g-browser announcement. According to an article last week on networkworld, "Mozilla generates the bulk of its income from ties to Google, according to the company's latest financial figures. For the 2006 tax year -- the most recent numbers made public by Mozilla -- 85%, or about $57 million of the company's $67 million in annual revenues for the year, came from Google."

At first glance webkit would seem to be an odd choice for the basis of a G-Browser. Upon closer look WebKit is an open source application with portions licensed under the LGPL and BSD licenses, both of which are much more Google friendly compared to the Mozilla license.

More details on webkit > http://webkit.org/

Google Mozilla deal > http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-mozilla-renews-go