China's "self-made" web browser is actually built on Google Chrome

Company claims that it’s “standing on a giant’s shoulders”

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China's "self-made" web browser is actually built on Google Chrome

Published: 9:45pm, 16 Aug 2018Updated: 8:36am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Redcore said their new web browser was supposed to be a breakthrough. They said it was “China’s first self-made innovative browser engine.”

But after reports emerged that Redcore’s “self-made” browser contains elements from Chrome, the company’s founder and CEO admitted that it was in fact “built on the foundations” of Google’s browser.

“We don’t deny building on Chrome’s browser engine,” Chen Benfeng told the South China Morning Post’s Sarah Dai. “Google and Apple also did not write the first line of code. Doing so would be reinventing the wheel.”

Redcore originally claimed its browser engine -- effectively, the stuff under the hood -- differed from the four most widely used ones: Chrome uses Blink, Internet Explorer uses Trident, Firefox uses Gecko and Safari uses WebKit.

Redcore said its browser engine is “based on general browser engines, combined with innovative technologies.” This, in itself, is fine: Some of those engines are open source and therefore free for others to use. Blink, the engine powering Chrome, began as a fork of WebKit.

But some users found that Redcore goes beyond just using the back-end browser engine.