Google, Apple, and Mozilla are collaborating on a new benchmark project called the Speedometer 3 that will test their products’ responsiveness.
Though this seemed disastrous considering the involvement of three big giants, Speedometer 3’s governing policy gives us hope to trust in its working. The project is still in its infancy and may take quite a time to develop.
Speedometer 3 Benchmark Project
As it’s important for an industry to have standards to be trusted by the community, the giants in the tech industry – Google, Apple, and Mozilla are coming forward to develop a new benchmark standard – Speedometer 3.
Historically benchmarks haven’t done a great job at this and have actively competed for attention with the needs of real sites.
Speedometer 2 was a leap forward when it shipped in 2018, but it’s time to update it to test real user journeys from online life today.
— Mozilla Developer ???????????? (@mozhacks) December 15, 2022
This is described as a “cross-industry collaborative effort” from the above companies, where they intend to create a new model that balances the companies’ visions for measuring responsiveness. While this idea – creating a new standard to test their products’ responsiveness – seemed like a disaster, it isn’t.
The governing policy of Speedometer 3 mentioned a consent system – that needs all the parties’ approval for making significant changes to the standard, while the minimal changes need either of the other two parties. Further, all the significant changes can be tested and approved by a reviewer from any of the three parties.
This is to let the “team working should be able to move quickly for most changes, with a higher level of process and consensus expected based on the impact of the change.” Since this project is still in the nascent stage, the developers warn people trying it from its GitHub page, citing that it is “in active development and is unstable.”
Instead, they recommend users still stick to the Speedometer 2.1 until the new standard is developed. This follows Speedometer 2 – the current benchmark standard developed by Apple’s WebKit team.
