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Google Chrome's Ben Goodger Defends Mozilla's Rapid Release Cycle for Firefox on Astini News

There's been a lot of discussion over the rapid release cycle Mozilla has adopted for Firefox and all of its other projects. So much so that plenty of top Mozilla people have had to step in to defend and explain the decision.

In fact, it's not only Mozilla that is defending the move, Google's Ben Goodger came to the rescue as well and has said that the automatic update system in Google Chrome, which he helped build, is the browser's best feature to date.It's automatic updates that have been irking some of the rapid release cycle's most ardent critics, but the feature was a necessity if Firefox was to get a new version every six weeks.

"Autoupdate is one of Chrome's killer features. It is magical because it continuously updates an entire development platform invisibly, frequently. Supporting it has driven how we structure our development processes," Goodger explained.

Goodger was a Netscape employee and later went on to work with Mozilla. He was lead developer of the Firefox there, but joined Google when the Chrome project was created.

He says that automatic updates are Chrome's core feature. Even before there was a fully functioning browser, the automatic update system was up and running, bringing in new versions as they became available.

"Some five years after our autoupdater started updating a mostly blank window that could barely load webpages, it is now an engine for delivering an incredibly sophisticated web technology platform onto our users' computers," he explained.

Google Chrome users have no idea when the browser gets an update or what version they're running and that's a great thing. A browser is meant to help you use the web and the less it gets in the way of that the better.

That's been Mozilla's argument lately as well. It says that the web moves too fast to be slowed down by browsers improving every year or so. Web browsers must become better as fast as the web does. [via Google OS]

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