Often regarded as the ultimate rivals, and rarely seen in collaboration, Apple, Google, and Mozilla have joined forces to deliver an improved web browser benchmark tool for users everywhere.
Speedometer 3 (a follow-on from Speedometer 2) is a browser benchmark designed to measure responsiveness by simulating user interactions on demonstrator web applications.
For now, version 3 is still in “active development” according to a GitHub page, which recommends users to refer to version 2.1, developed by the same three browser giants, for the “latest stable version”.
Speedometer 3
Google Chrome - which accounts for almost two-thirds of the market according to StatCounter December 2022 figures) - took to Twitter to explain its intentions that Speedometer 3 shall be updated, “to include representative modern workloads, like JavaScript frameworks.”
With more information set to be shared “in the coming months”, it seems that Speedometer 3 may still be a long way off yet.
A Tweet by the Mozilla Developer account explained the importance of such an update:
“Nobody intentionally builds a website that lags or stutters. The Web promises smooth experiences, but sometimes it falls short. When it does, users suffer.”
The thread continues to discuss how Speedometer 2, which shipped in 2018, is in need of an update as the web has progressed.
WebKit - an Apple-backed open-source project that powers Safari - was a little less revealing on social media. It simply announced plans for the joint venture, stating that “working together will help [the three organizations] further improve the benchmark and improve browser performance for [their] users.”
Safari and Firefox make up around 19% and 3% of the overall browser market share respectively.
For now, the updates remain largely unknown, however a GitHub post explains how the collaboration will work. There will be three types of changes: trivial changes that requires reviewer approval, non-trivial changes that require approval from at least two of the organizations, and major changes that require a consensus to be reached by all organizations.
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