I think its probably more exactly what it says -- a way of eliminating the overhead of dealing with the complexity of the WebKit ecosystem. As noted in the article, "Google says, for example, that it will be able to remove 7 build systems and delete more than 7,000 files comprising more than 4.5 million lines right off the bat."

That's a whole lot of complexity that isn't relevant to what Google is doing with Chrome that is worth not having to deal with.

So it seems to me that ChuckMcM may not be far off.

[1]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/google...

Doubtful.

I mean, sure, one could fabricate them, but why, especially if he can easily be caught doing it? Those are things anybody can verify by looking at the repository stats.

Here's what I found with a cursory look: Google has overtook Apple in commits 2-3 years already:

http://blog.bitergia.com/2013/02/06/report-on-the-activity-o...

Older stats (already Google on top): http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2010/02/webkit-...

And a TechCrunch article on the issue: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/06/google-apple-webkit/

And then I got a good night's sleep, waking up to find that I'd communicated the opposite of what I meant and that it's too late to edit my comment.