Why Chrome is WebKit and not Gecko

When Google announced their browser and that it'd be using WebKit, it came to me as no surprise, they're using it in Android and are a supporter of the WebKit project. The question is, though, why?

Gecko obviously is more popular, more sites support Gecko than WebKit, Gecko has its strong points, as it is a descendent of Netscape. This legacy has its liability, and from those in the know, Gecko is unmanageable versus the cleaner WebKit which was based of KHTML. Though, this isn't the only reason, Gecko implements some Trident bugs and quirks [dubious|needs citation] this makes it better compatible with more webpages but less standard complaint than WebKit. Google basing its browser on WebKit tries to establish WebKit as a major player, which forces web developers to focus on standard compliance and cross-browser compatibility versus rendering engine specific bugs and quirks.

The most interesting bit though, is the code in Chrome borrowed from Mozilla, no idea what specific portions are borrowed but it would be interesting to find out how that all fits in the WebKit vs Gecko debate.