By Andrew Betts of FT Labs
Google has announced a major change to its Chrome browser this week. While it represents a divergence in a key part of Chrome previously shared with Apple’s Safari browser, the move should enable Google ultimately to up its pace of innovation.
So for those who might think that a ‘rendering engine’ is a piece of farm machinery, we offer the following overview of this development, which represents a substantial fork in the road in the development of the web. Read more
by Dan Thomas, Telecoms Correspondent
Google is taking Chrome mobile for the first time with the introduction of its web browser across the Android phone platform.
The company promises to make surfing the web a seamless experience from desktop to phone by allowing users to sync opened web pages, bookmarks and preferences across devices. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
Google’s Chrome 15 has replaced Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) as the world’s most popular browser edition, Computer World reports. During the last two weeks of November and the first week of December, according to data from StatCounter, Chrome 15 accounted for 24% of the global browser usage market, compared to IE8′s 22.9%. This is the first time that IE8 had not held the top spot since early 2010 and the first time a non-Microsoft application has led the list. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
Arabic has become the fastest-growing language on Twitter, TNW reports. A study by Paris-based agency Semiocast found that out of approximately 180m tweets posted on a daily basis in October 2011, 2.2m of them were posted in Arabic, against 30,000 in July 2010 and 99,000 October 2010. A sample of 5.6bn public tweets, gathered from July 2010 to October 2011, revealed that the top five languages in use on Twitter are English, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Malay. Arabic comes in at number eight. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
