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Interview With Google's V8 Author Lars Bak

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the under-the-bonnet dept.

Dr Pete writes "Financial Times has an interesting piece about Lars Bak and Kasper Lund the authors of the V8 virtual machine in Google's Chrome browser. 'Chrome attracted more than 10 million users in its first 100 days. Although that's an impressive number, it still only translates into about 1 per cent of browser usage online. It will be a while before it can compete with Firefox, Internet Explorer and others. In December last year, Google announced that Chrome was now out of its development, or Beta, phase and is ready to be shipped as a pre-installed browser on some PCs. This could rapidly increase the number of users. Moreover, the European Commission's antitrust battle with Microsoft over, among other things, how its own browser, Internet Explorer, is integrated into its Windows operating system may give competitors such as Google a chance to claim ground.'" Interestingly enough Google Chrome is currently fighting it out with Safari as the #3 web browser on Slashdot.

10 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Chrome as the built in? by moniker127 · · Score: 4, Informative

    May actually be an option very soon. Internet explorer is completely uninstallable in the latest build of windows 7. (7022 & later)

    1. Re:Chrome as the built in? by moniker127 · · Score: 5, Informative

      No. IE 8 comes with windows 7, but you can remove it through programs and features.

  2. What about Iron? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've heard so much about Chrome on Slashdot, but nothing about Iron.

    According to the Wikipedia page on Google Chrome:

    SRWare Iron is a release of Chromium software that explicitly disables the collection and transmission of usage information.[30]

    The Wikipedia page further details the information collected by Chrome.

    Any comments?

  3. Linux and osx by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been playing around with the ongoing ports to linux and osx and have been really impressed so far. The linux port is now equivelent in speed to 2.0 on windows, tabs are functional by keyboard shortcut if not mouse yet, spellchecking is in, the startup time blows away all the other browsers on my system, and in general it's looking like a first class port instead of the afterthought I'd initially taken it to be. Obviously there's still a ton more to do on it, but the foundation's looking really solid.

    --
    Everything will be taken away from you.
    1. Re:Linux and osx by Tacvek · · Score: 3, Informative

      Non-scalable fonts are not subject to copyright in the United States, but may be subject to design patents. Scalable fonts in the other hand, are subject to copyright. The output of these fonts are not, but the font files themselves are.

      If you want to think of it one way, scalable fonts are full blown computer programs, and are thereby subject to copyright, even if what they output is not. I can write a program that outputs the first million digits of pi, and the program can be subject to copyright protection, even though the output mist definitely is not. Same basic idea.

      --
      Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  4. slashdot browser / os stats by jeffstar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe I have imagined this, but I thought there used to be a slashbox which displayed OS and or browser stats.

    I think it got to be a bit depressing to see the % of linux users dropping as /. attracted bigger and bigger crowds so that slashbox disappeared.

    I doubt there is another website which has more linux users so the /. stats probably represent a best case number for linux market penetration.

  5. GoogleUpdate by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be a lot more inclined to use Chrome if I could do so without it installing the GoogleUpdate service and then turning it back on after I've explicitly disabled it. Windows is bloated enough without me being "tricked" into running additional services that I don't want or need.

    1. Re:GoogleUpdate by DrEldarion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For the vast, vast majority of people, forcing updates on them is by far the best way to go. How many computers could be virus-free right now if everything were always automatically patched?

      That said, there SHOULD be a way to disable it without having to jump through hoops.

  6. Re:Is this the guy? by Gnavpot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is this the drummer from Metallica?

    No, but the country is correct. Lars Bak, Kasper Lund and the drummer are all from Denmark.

  7. Non-tech conclusion: Google should buy Sun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny
    I know Google is a python shop, but geez, every product having:

    .

    A virtual machine.

    JIT.

    sandboxing

    frameworks

    cross-platform capability

    bytecode (at least for Android)

    .

    Might as well buy Sun, use their IP and re-implement everything in Scala.Then they'll be ready to take over the world.