WebKit was the original rendering engine, but Google eventually forked it to create the Blink engine all Chrome variants except iOS now use Blink.Īs of March 2021, StatCounter estimates that Chrome has a 66% worldwide browser market share (after peaking at 72.38% in November 2018) on personal computers (PC), is also dominant on mobile, and has caught up with Safari on tablets (or about a percent-point below at 42.33%), and at 63.59% across all platforms combined. Most of Chrome’s source code comes from Google’s free and open-source software project Chromium, but Chrome is licensed as proprietary freeware. The browser is also the main component of Chrome OS, where it serves as the platform for web applications. It was later ported to Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android where it is the default browser built into the OS. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google.
