Speedometer is a browser benchmarking tool that measures responsiveness by simulating user interactions on web applications. Speedometer was launched by Apple’s WebKit team, and the Chrome and Firefox development teams have also joined in a few days ago, and will cooperate to develop the next major version of Speedometer, namely Speedometer 3.

Speedometer 1.0 was released in 2014, followed by a major update to version 2.0 in 2018, and the latest stable version is 2.1.

Users who often read our articles should be familiar with Speedometer. In March and June of this year, Google’s Chrome team used Speedometer to benchmark Chrome on Mac twice, and we reported on both. In March, Chrome overtook Safari in benchmark tests to become the fastest browser on the Mac platform. In June, Google further optimized Chrome’s performance, bringing a 20% improvement.

For the jointly developed Speedometer 3, the three major browser vendors will cooperate in a “joint governance model”. The goal is to create a common understanding of web performance in order to drive browser performance, ultimately delivering substantial benefits to users.

According to the governance policy, the browser projects that the three parties currently participate in this plan include Blink/V8, Gecko/SpiderMonkey, and WebKit/JavaScriptCore. To keep Speedometer 3’s benchmarks from favoring one side’s browser, the policy also requires that any major changes need to be approved by at least two parties within 10 business days, and can’t be implemented if there is strong opposition.

Speedometer 3 is currently in active development, and developers can now find it at Github Follow the development on.

We’re excited to be working with Chrome and Firefox on the next generation of the Speedometer benchmark, which measures real-world browser performance on the web. Collaboration will help us further improve our benchmarks and improve browser performance for our users.

Unlike some benchmarks in the past, Speedometer 3 was a cross-industry collaborative project.It’s a lot of work, and working together gives us the opportunity to build the best version possible to help make the web faster for years to come