According to Google, these tweaks led to a significant new performance milestone across Mac and Android, resulting in a 10% increase in Apple’s Speedometer 2.1 browser benchmark over three months.
The adjustments involve a range of tweaks, from improved caching to better memory management. While some may not care about the technical details of how the speed improvements were achieved, many will certainly appreciate a faster browser.
Despite user complaints over the years about Chrome’s sluggishness, the browser continues to dominate the market. As of March 2023, Chrome had pulled in 64.8% of the global market share, with Safari, its closest rival, trailing at just 19.5% across all platforms.
On desktop, Chrome’s share is higher at 65.8%
Edge follows closely at 11.12% and Safari at 10.91%. Google has provided a detailed explanation of the tweaks made to achieve this new milestone. For example, the company found targeted optimizations for the highly-used JS “Object.prototype.toString” and “Array.prototype.join” functions.
It also introduced specialized fast paths for parsing to improve “innerHTML,” a common way of updating the DOM via JavaScript. Another improvement involved more efficient pointer compression and better memory management techniques. This tweak impacts operations that take place frequently, resulting in a more widespread performance boost.
Google solidifies its position
The post also talks about relocating frequently accessed objects, such as JavaScript’s “undefined,” to the beginning of the memory bases, where they can be accessed with faster machine code.
If those details don’t matter to you, at least one of the improvements that Google made will also benefit WebKit, the browser engine developed by Apple and used in Safari. That means even more web browser users, not just Chrome users, may see improvements.
While Google’s browser continues to dominate the market, these updates will only cement its position as the go-to web browser for millions of users worldwide.
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