Apple, Google, Firefox Partner on Speedometer Browser Benchmark

Google on Thursday announced it is collaborating with Apple and Mozilla Foundation-backed Firefox “to work on the next Speedometer benchmark to measure real-world browser performance.”

[1/3] We’re joining an important collab with Apple @WebKit & @firefox to work on the next Speedometer benchmark to measure real-world browser performance. https://t.co/GOxM6pIrkX

— Chrome (@googlechrome) December 15, 2022

Speedometer is a browser benchmark designed to measure the responsiveness of Web applications, per its website. “It uses demo web applications to simulate user actions such as adding to-do items.”

Apple’s WebKit team released the first iteration of Speedometer back in 2014. Speedometer 2.0 came out in 2018, bringing support for modern JavaScript frameworks and libraries.

Now, the WebKit team at Apple is partnering with Google and Firefox on Speedometer 3.0, which will update the benchmark for more modern workloads and make it capable of testing end-to-end user journeys instead of specific browser features.

“This work will be based on a joint governance model to share work, and build a collaborative understanding of performance on the web to help drive browser performance in ways that help users,” Google continued in a follow-up tweet.

“We look forward to the benchmark being updated to include representative modern workloads, like JavaScript frameworks. We’ll have more info to share in the coming months.”

You can follow Speedometer 3.0’s development progress on its GitHub page. “Our primary goal is to make it reflect the real-world Web as much as possible. When a browser improves its score on the benchmark, actual users should benefit,” the GitHub description reads.

Last year, Apple celebrated the twentieth anniversary of WebKit and its Safari browser.