Recently, Chrome’s WebRTC product manager, Serge Lachapelle, asked a critical question about WebRTC “product of the year” awards:
I see all these webrtc product of the year awards... And here I am wondering how come Chrome has not won one yet.
— Serge Lachapelle (@slac) March 25, 2015We agree!
Without all the hard work by the Chrome, Firefox, and Opera teams, WebRTC would not exist, nor could we build applications like Talky.
WebRTC is by far the most complex feature ever added to web browsers, and we believe it to be an important technology for the present and future of the Open Web.
We’re extremely grateful for the work of standards authors, and for the hard work of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera teams in creating quality platforms that make it possible to build web applications with peer-to-peer voice, video, and data — many of which are reliably interoperable.
Most of these folks do their work on these technologies with minimal thanks or accolades from users or businesses who rely on them. Our hats are off to each one of them!
Over the years of working with WebRTC, we’ve had a lot of interactions with the Chrome and Firefox teams (and for the record, a member of the Opera team also fixed a bug I filed recently). They’ve all been great to work with - and they care, as we do, about making realtime communication technologies friendly for web developers.
But above any other, it’s clear to us that one platform has contributed more to the WebRTC ecosystem - Google Chrome.
Here’s why:
- According to our internal stats, 85% of Talky users choose Chrome.
- The quality is awesome and feature set is far ahead of the curve. Our team uses and relies on it for small group conversations daily and it’s the only option that has enough features to support our weekly team meetings.
- The Chrome team’s response to critical bug reports is awesome, as explained in “Chrome update killed the WebRTC star.” Also, their bug report process works really well.
- The WebRTC.org Library is widely used to power apps on mobile devices, such as our Talky iOS app.
In recognition of the above work and for their contributions towards WebRTC, we are pleased to acknowledge them as the “WebRTC Platform of the Year.”
The award features both the WebRTC and Chrome logos - the combination of technology and platform we want to recognize with this honor. What’s that little rocket? It’s a small, but beloved part of Talky, included to remind us how Talky is made possible by the work of the Google team. And of course, the award is certified by &yet, a company.
Who needs permission to give awards? We sure don’t.
With that, we're proud to congratulate the Chrome team on winning the 2015 WebRTC Platform of the Year Award!