Apple, Google And Mozilla United Develop The New Browser Speedometer 3

Apple Google and Mozilla, working together to create a next-generation browser benchmark called Speedometer 3. (photo; Twitter @mozhacks)

JAKARTA - Apple, the maker of the Safari browser, Google maker Chrome, and Mozilla, the Firefox maker, are working together to create a next-generation browser benchmark called Speedometer 3. This was revealed in a tweet from the three companies.

It also means that the main players in the web browser and the rendering engine space will have the same sound in the benchmarks meant to test the performance of their apps with the latest technology that websites might use.

In a Twitter thread, Mozilla says that the benchmarks created by some web companies will help provide a "joint understanding of what's important". Mozilla says it's important when users try to coordinate all web developers, standard bodies, groups that create machines that interpret code by that standard, and companies that create browsers based on those machines.

Mozilla (Firefox) is working with Google (Chrome) and Apple (WebKit/Safari) on Speedometer 3, an update to the website performance benchmark. https://t.co/TqzO8COIBi

— Stephen Shankland (@stshank) December 15, 2022

Apple's WebKit Twitter account describes this by saying that "working together will help us further improve benchmarks and improve browser performance for our users."

This benchmark will eventually be used to compare the Safari WebKit with Google's Blink Chrome or V8 machine with SpiderMonkey Mozilla, which may be uncomfortable for the company, depending on the results.

However, as Google shows in its Twitter thread, the company has set rules that will help prevent any of them from trying to provide results that benefit them.

Non-trivial changes will require approval from "at least two of the participating browser projects" and cannot be implemented if there are strong objections from other parties, and major changes require consensus from everyone involved, according to governance policies.

It's currently very early for its Speedometer 3 page GitHub says that Speedometer 3 is in "active and unstable development" and recommends using Speedometer 2.1 instead. That version was mainly made by Apple's WebKit team.

According to Google, they are looking to make sure a new version is "renewable to include a representative modern workload, such as a JavaScript framework," and there will be more information on what it really is in the next few months.