Google is ending support for a widely used browser benchmark after determining that the test had actually become detrimental to web performance.
The benchmark, called Octane, has been widely used since 2012 by developers trying to assess how well a browser runs JavaScript, a core component of the web.
But as browsers got better and better at taking the test, Google saw something start to happen: “we began to notice that JavaScript optimizations which eked out higher Octane scores often had a detrimental effect on real-world scenarios.”
