Google’s hard work to keep increasing the speed of its browser seems to have paid off, and in rather surprising ways.

The company’s Google Chrome browser recently earned the highest score yet on Apple’s Speedometer 2.0 benchmark.

In order to measure the speed of its browser, Google uses a combination of internal benchmarking infrastructure and industry-standard public benchmarking. When it comes to comparing JavaScript performance across browsers, Apple’s Speedometer 2.0 benchmark is the most widely used tool today because it provides an accurate description of real-world testing.

Improved Chrome performance

Since 2015, Google has been measuring Chrome’s speedometer scores on a 13-inch MacBook. While browser performance has improved on Intel-based Macs, the release of Apple’s M1 chips in 2020 brought a huge boost in performance.

In a blog post, Google explained that the projects it has worked on over the years have dramatically improved Chrome’s performance.

Since the launch of Chrome in 2008, the search giant has set out to create the fastest browser whether you use it on a smartphone or a laptop. However, this was not the case for all.

For example, with pointer compression, the company was willing to reduce performance slightly to make Chrome use less memory. This was also the case when the Specter CPU exploit hit and Google had to trade performance to keep its users safe.

Overall, years of work on projects such as C++ Quick Finds, Thin Strings, Parser Redesign and more have led to an 83% improvement in the metric score. Chrome speed. Still, it was the combination of Apple’s introduction of the M1 processor with Google’s Sparkplug and LTO+PGO projects that helped Chrome rise to the top of the speedometer scores. Chrome now scores over 300 on the speedometer and it’s the highest score ever for a browser.

These scores will likely continue to improve as Google develops its browser, and Apple’s new M1 Ultra chip will also give Chrome another significant performance boost on macOS.