Chronology: Chrome came out in early September 2008. Mozilla's TraceMonkey was under development from April of that year. True, we started on a JIT customized for JavaScript (i.e., not Tamarin) later than we should have, but we did not start because Chrome with V8 was known publicly and already in the market.
I believe Apple's SquirrelFishExtreme work was also going on in the summer of 2008, on a webkit.org svn branch.
Your general point is good: healthy competition helps the web evolve. We got the world we wanted in launching Firefox in 2004. The battle's far from over, what with all the lock-in on mobile devices and in social network sites.
I believe Apple's SquirrelFishExtreme work was also going on in the summer of 2008, on a webkit.org svn branch.
Your general point is good: healthy competition helps the web evolve. We got the world we wanted in launching Firefox in 2004. The battle's far from over, what with all the lock-in on mobile devices and in social network sites.