With their latest move to develop a new version of the Speedometer browser benchmark dubbed Speedometer 3 to better represent modern browser tasks, Apple, Google, and Mozilla have transitioned from rivals to collaborators. The new version is still in beta, but users can begin testing it right away.
To share work, the three major browser engines/players are collaborating through a joint governance model. The goal is to develop a collaborative understanding of web performance in order to drive browser performance in ways that benefit users.
Instead of benchmarking in a constrained environment, the Speedometer 3 is intended to test the full range of how normal users operate browsers by running on normal web pages. The developers intend to continuously improve the software based on the most recent data on which features are most important to everyday users. Google confirmed that the benchmark will include JavaScript frameworks as well as other modern workloads.
Speedometer 3 has no release date, and its Github description only says it is “in active development and unstable.” Interested parties can track the project’s progress on Github, where it hasn’t been updated in three weeks.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.