Chrome is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month. It’s hard to believe how much the web has changed in that time and we, the Chrome team, feel privileged to have been able to play a part in its evolution, in partnership with one of the most driven, thriving communities. Most of the web’s capabilities and exciting experiences today wouldn’t exist without the contributions of engineers across browser vendors, standards bodies, frameworks and libraries, and a multitude of open source contributors as well as the work done by web developers.
When we launched our browser 15 years ago, we also launched Chromium as a commitment for our support to the web, evolving our core values to meet the changing needs of the web of today to being a responsible user agent, promoting a helpful and innovative web, and partnering to safeguard the openness of the web.
Being a responsible user agent
With the web’s latest capabilities, you can now stream 3D games, unleash your creativity, and do so much more, all through the browser. As we work together to extend the platform’s capabilities, it is also our responsibility to maintain trust on the web by keeping people safe and protecting their data.
We have been focused on providing more granular control over permissions granted to web apps, and using machine learning models to filter out notifications and permission prompts from apps that are linked to malware and phishing attacks. And, with the Privacy Sandbox initiative, we’re working closely with the entire ecosystem to improve privacy, while preserving the needs of a thriving digital ecosystem.
There are billions of sites serving content today, so it’s super important that we do this well to build a web that everyone can trust.
Promoting a helpful and innovative web
Even after thirty years, the web remains one of the most powerful tools for getting things done. We want to keep extending its capabilities and efficiency. Over the years, we’ve made many upgrades to make the browser faster, safer, and more accessible for everyone. Over the next few years, we want to build capabilities that enable new experiences, enriched by the power of AI, and create a development environment that significantly increases developer productivity.
Capabilities that enable new experiences
People use Chrome for all sorts of things—whether it’s planning trips and researching holiday gifts, watching videos, or editing photos. We think there’s so many more ways people can get things done on the web. Our efforts with Project Fugu brought more than 50 APIs to the browser, and helped companies like LEGO® Education to deliver their SPIKE(TM) kits to millions of students globally.
Advances in user interface design play an equally important role in making experiences feel modern and intuitive. With RenderingNG, we’re getting the browser ready for the next generation of high fidelity content. By championing exciting APIs like View Transitions and Scroll-driven animations, we’re also pushing the platform’s ability to deliver slick navigation and non-linear transitions that users only expect in native apps.
A platform primed for AI enabled experiences
The web has always been the platform of choice for any developer looking to ship their product instantly, and we’re seeing the same trend for many new AI products. Chrome Web Store developers offer many exciting AI powered Chrome Extension experiences, with over 100 million combined active users across hundreds of extensions that offer services like reading/writing, content summary, voice-to-text, code editing and more.
With Google pioneering responsible AI, we’re committed to bringing the best of our products and solutions to web developers so they can deliver cutting-edge AI experiences to their users without needing to be a machine learning expert. And, by championing APIs like WebGPU, we are enabling developers to bring their own machine learning models to the web at high speeds.
Solutions to significantly enhance developer productivity
To usher in a more helpful web, it’s important to center developers’ needs in our work. We want to meet developers where they are—right in their workflows and taking their stack choices into account.
In 2020, we launched Core Web Vitals that have proven to be a key tool in measuring page quality over the years. With tools like Chrome DevTools and Lighthouse, we made it easier for developers to find opportunities to improve their Web Vitals, right in their workflow.
We also kicked off Project Aurora two years ago, which was an important collaboration between the Chrome team and open source frameworks to bring Core Web Vitals improvements directly to the tools that developers use the most. To help developers debug the code they write and not what gets compiled due to the framework, we launched the Modern Web Debugging initiative that has already built in support for many frameworks in Chrome DevTools.
Finally, cross-browser testing and automation is yet another challenge that developers have to tackle We’re actively working with all major browsers on Web Driver BiDi, a new standard that uses the best of the WebDriver Classic and the Chrome DevTools Protocol to make cross-browser automation significantly better for developers.
Partnering to safeguard the openness of the web
We recognize that an open and thriving web helps drive more innovation. However, we also know that keeping up with platform changes and the inconsistency of features support across browsers remains one of the top challenges for developers.
Over the past few years, we’ve been working in earnest to address this problem. We started with our collaboration on the MDN DNA Study back in 2019–20, which resulted in the Compat 2021 initiative. This is now known as Interop, and continues to deliver positive results for the web, including landing much loved features like Cascade layers and Container queries. And most recently, we’ve been working closely with the WebDX Community Group and other browser vendors to simplify updates to the web with Baseline.
Over the years, we’ve actively contributed to and collaborated on many initiatives with ecosystem partners to build an open, stable web. This work will continue as we move the platform forward.
Reflecting back at our journey so far, we find ourselves marveling at the progress the web has made, and the prospect of what’s next for Chrome and the web gives us a tingle of excitement. As we continue to play our role in the web ecosystem, we are more motivated than ever to be a trusted, helpful partner in building a powerful web that is made easier for developers. We are Chrome for Developers.
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