Chinese Startup Breaks the US Monopoly on Web Browsers by Repackaging Chrome

cageymaru

cageymaru

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A Chinese software development house called Redcore made claim to being the first to have "broken the American monopoly" on web browsers. They boasted of developing the first "100pc China-developed browser." They did this by repackaging Google Chrome files into an installer and passing it off as their own Redcore browser. Of course savvy Chinese users quickly identified the Google Chrome files within the installer and an apology was issued. Redcore's innovation helped them to garner $36 million in support from Chinese and foreign investors such as Morningside Capital, IDG Capital and Fortune Venture Capital. The Chinese government now proudly uses the Redcore web browser. Made in China 2025.

"We don't deny building on Chrome's browser engine," said Chen, who wore a Nike T-shirt with the "Just Do It" slogan. "The web browser is a very old technology, writing the code from scratch will take many years. It's like Android was built on the foundation of Linux, but nobody doubts Android or Google's innovation. Google and Apple also did not write the first line of code, doing so would be reinventing the wheel." On Thursday afternoon, the download site for Redcore's browser was unreachable. Chen said the site was down because of the volume of download requests, not because it was deliberately taken down by the company.
 
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Most likely they repackage Chromium cause that's open source while Chrome isn't. Which a few browsers already do this anyway. If China wants to be innovative and not just a country that steals ideas, they need to open their country up, both inside and out.
 
Joust said:
Chinese innovation. This probably happens on a greater or lesser scale daily.
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It does and it is a real problem they have. For example you find that China puts out more research papers than any other nation, yet they have almost no citations in foreign journals. Now at first you might think it is some kind of language or country barrier but you discover that no, scientific journals cite each other from around the world all the time. The real reason? Almost all the research is garbage. Researchers routinely just make shit up, never perform the experiments they said, and so on. The results are worthless so nobody uses them.

Now this might not seem like an issue at first glance, but you start to have a problem when you don't develop anything yourself, all your technology has to be imported/copied.
 
Well, there's still Opera, though I'm unsure if they're still developing their own rendering engine for it. I know they switched to another (qtwebkit? chromium? Can't remember off hand) at some point, but they may have switched back.
 
Ffs they could have renamed the files....

Lazy $$$$s.

Our New OS mega windows tin and redcore, are better than ever.

I mean like code is so old and no one wants to code an os because it would take years and talent, so we added a theme:)

It May look like a mustang with purple pink paint but its totally original.
 
Idea's and thotts made in China designed by populous global leadership!
 
Nobu said:
Well, there's still Opera, though I'm unsure if they're still developing their own rendering engine for it. I know they switched to another (qtwebkit? chromium? Can't remember off hand) at some point, but they may have switched back.
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Opera is still Chromium based; and probably always will be now. Maintaining a browser engine is just too much work now that the web has gotten so complex for a tiny company to be able to afford to do. Current versions of Opera feel like using Chrome but used Opera's servers for services not Googles.

Vivaldi is another Chromium based browser, made by mostly former Opera devs that tries to retain the large degree of UI flexibility/configurability that Opera had when still using it's own native html rendering engine. As a refugee from the Presto engine Opera of old, Vivaldi feels a lot more like what I lost when Opera 12 finally became too outdated to run much of the modern web.
 
Nobu said:
Well, there's still Opera, though I'm unsure if they're still developing their own rendering engine for it. I know they switched to another (qtwebkit? chromium? Can't remember off hand) at some point, but they may have switched back.
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No I'm pretty sure the presto browser is dead, sides the company was sold to Kunhoo Software, so :)

The web browser is a very old technology, writing the code from scratch will take many years.
Nine years isn't what I call very old (granted they started with Webkit and some other OS libraries), but I guess in Chinese tech is it?
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Edit: The site is back up, but I can't read nor easily copy the text from this image, anyone?

https://redcore.cn/assets/images/index/statement.png
 
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Rob94hawk said:
The Chinese copied someone else's work and claimed it as their own? No! Say it isn't so! :eek::LOL:
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They didn’t even copy it, they didn’t even RENAME the core files! They took the file and renamed the shortcut essentially.
 
DanNeely said:
Opera is still Chromium based; and probably always will be now. Maintaining a browser engine is just too much work now that the web has gotten so complex for a tiny company to be able to afford to do. Current versions of Opera feel like using Chrome but used Opera's servers for services not Googles.

Vivaldi is another Chromium based browser, made by mostly former Opera devs that tries to retain the large degree of UI flexibility/configurability that Opera had when still using it's own native html rendering engine. As a refugee from the Presto engine Opera of old, Vivaldi feels a lot more like what I lost when Opera 12 finally became too outdated to run much of the modern web.
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I think you are confusing Chromium and Webkit.

Opera does indeed use Webkit now. So does chromium. So does Apple's Safari. They are - however - not the second thing.

It was originally developed by the people behind the KDE desktop on Linux. At some point Apple coopted it. Apple has a nasty habit of taking over Open Source projects and violating the spirit of the license, keeping the original project open, but putting building blocks on top of it that they do not freely redistribute as is the intent of the various open source licensing models. In other words, they profit off of other people's work.

Anyway, in 2005 Apple had a change of heart and open sources Webkit again. At this point Google started using it, and what they built on top of Webkit eventually became the Chromium open source project, some builds of which have sone snall tweakstmade to them, compiled and are released as Chrome binaries.

Apple still uses Webkit though, as do many other projects, including now Opera.

IMHO, switching to Webkit was one of the best decisions the Opera project ever made. I tested Opera back in the day on the old engine, wanting a independent browser, and found that it broke like 90% of the webpages I wanted to use. It's amazing anyone used it at all during that period. It was terrible.
 
Seems browsers always have their roots in another browsers garden. Firefox came into being after Netscape released the source code for it's browser and came up with Mozilla, before AOL bought them out. They then rewrote all the browser code based on Gecko and later based Firefox off of it.
 
and lets not forget Netscape came from Mosaic (and last I checked it can still load HardOCP under windows 10, might not look that pretty but it works).
 
What's up with China news lately?
Like they haven't copied shit for dozens of years?

Can't you focus more on the tech than looking like New York Times?

China copies!
Cryptocurrency down!

And the sheep follow...
 
DukenukemX said:
Most likely they repackage Chromium cause that's open source while Chrome isn't. Which a few browsers already do this anyway. If China wants to be innovative and not just a country that steals ideas, they need to open their country up, both inside and out.
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This will not happen unless the people start demanding it.

Chances of that happening are slim to nothing.

Better odds on Colenel Sanders returning your chickens after offering to babysit them for the weekend while you go to Disney.
 
wow, you guys must be really fucking terrified of China these days. Nothing else I can think of can explain such behaviour. You're fucking scared someone is beating you at "your own game", losing relevance and
 
dgz said:
wow, you guys must be really fucking terrified of China these days. Nothing else I can think of can explain such behaviour. You're fucking scared someone is beating you at "your own game", losing relevance and
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Nah, just your usual internet inhabitants. Nothing to see here...move along.
 
dgz said:
wow, you guys must be really fucking terrified of China these days. Nothing else I can think of can explain such behaviour. You're fucking scared someone is beating you at "your own game", losing relevance and
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Terrified? Seems more like we are poking fun at them for their problem. They seem to have a problem getting their innovation up. It is rare to see some one fail to tell the difference between terror and pity.

The only worrisome part is how their IP theft damages the ones that spent the money, and had the talent, and put in the work, to actually create something in the rest of the world.
 
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