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Will Google Launch A Browser?
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Sep 20, 2004 07:21 PM
from the sweet-patooties-up-for-wager dept.
from the sweet-patooties-up-for-wager dept.
ServeYourWorld writes "The
New York Post is reporting that 'Based on the half-dozen hires in recent
weeks, Google appears to be planning to launch its own Web browser and other software
products to challenge Microsoft.' I took a guess and did a whois search for Gbrowser.com
and indeed Google Inc. is listed as the registrar."
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Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Funny)
Google browser? Too awkward. They should... (Score:5, Funny)
I can already see how it will revolutionize the english language:
Joe: "Hey Hank, did you growse that info?"
Hank: "Yeah, my growser growsed it up real good."
Joe: "That's some mighty fine growsing, Hank."
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Easy, rebrand firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Or perhaps, I'm talking out my ass.
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Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, I reported on "user agents" at work today. Our web-based systems are used by many corporations throughout the world. All users are authenticated, and we strongly discourage robots. We stipulate that our users use "modern browsers"... we don't want to support outdated, buggy implementations.
[I still can't imagine that web designers don't design for all modern browsers. We have a large and sophisticated application costing millions, and I have to say that it cost about $100 to make sure that we could support just about everyone]
In any case, in my business, the IE6 market is almost exactly 67%. A year ago such a low number for IE was unthinkable. Happily, IE4 and IE5 combined are now well below 2%. [We don't support IE4 - piece of junk. IE5 is junky too: my case was to drop support, which I won.]
There are some NS4 users remaining, but only a handful [unsupported]. Mozilla and Firefox have, of course, taken a huge chunk of IE's business. Safari is a strong player on the Mac front, but it still has market to gain to completely overshadow IE5/Mac. The Mozilla family is fairly popular on the Mac, but Safari is still leading the way.
All the other browsers combined are less than 5%. That included Opera, Konqueror, Lynx, and other oddities and unknowns.
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Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, if everyone just stuck with the standards, this would be a non-issue.
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Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Let me guess: (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's just hope that Gmail still works with other browsers.
Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Informative)
Opera already does that if you enable the Google TextAds feature... with Google, no less.
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Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it ever occur to you people that maybe not everyone likes the same things you do?
Honest - other people have opinions, they really do. Maybe YOU don't prefer Opera, but the original poster does. Mentioning the benefits and your opinion of Firefox is fine, but don't be a condescending jackass just because they prefer Opera.
Cripes.. if you like Firefox, fine - I love Firefox, it's my absolute number one browser of choice, but that doesn't mean I'm so utterly wrapped up in myself and my own thought processes that I don't recognize that maybe some other people don't like it the same way I do.
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Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that such a thing doesn't exist is proof that people have learned to live with and expect ads. What do they care if yet another sits atop their browser?
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Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google places it's name on a browser, it will sure become popular in a matter of days.
The success of standards depend on having multiple quality implementations. Right now, this remains a problem as only Mozilla does it right (Safari seems to be fine but I never really tested it).
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Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Funny)
A grammar checker for text input boxes is something you might not want to live without.
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Re:Let me guess: (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely;
-Grammar Nutsie
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Of course... (Score:5, Funny)
It gets even better (Score:5, Funny)
Google is launching a new OS based on Gloucestershire health clubs! Come on now, not even MS or Apple has thought of that one. [grins]
GBrowser (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GBrowser (Score:5, Funny)
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Rich web apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has some of these apps (search, email etc).
Google get's richer.
Re:Rich web apps (Score:5, Funny)
You won't need to keep a browser installed on your PC anymore. Wherver you are, you can just log on to http://browser.google.com with, um, oh wait...
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Nope (Score:5, Funny)
Woooh! I think not.
It would be more commendable . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Best search engine? Perhaps. But let's leave it at that.
Don't be blinded by the generosity; they're potentially gearing up to be just as wicked of a monopoly as Microsoft. Whether their intentions are clear or not, that probably should not be happening, since too much power has a tendency to corrupt -- except under very exceptional circumstances.
Re:It would be more commendable . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Eric has had a wonderful track record of running companies into the ground and doing stupid stuff. Novell (which rebounded after he left), SUN (in which he screwed over JAVA), and Xerox PARC (how many good ideas slipped through their fingers?).
One of my professors, after Schmidt came onto Google, told us in class "Enjoy Google while it lasts, its going to start to expand into other areas and start to fail" and I am really afraid that he is going to turn out to be right.
When Froogle came out I started to be afraid, when Gmail came out, I started to worry more, if this turns out to be true, I really weep for the future.
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Re:It would be more commendable . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't see what you might possibly find offensive about Froogle and Gmail, or why their respective releases made you "afraid" for the future of Google.
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Re:It would be more commendable . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I think he raises valid concerns, perhaps not very well articulated though.
His concern is that Google, under Schmidt, will 'diversify' and try to be everything for everybody, and stretch too thin for their own good.
Another concern is their approach to privacy. They log every search tied to the IP address forever. The same in Gmail, where they don't delete messages. These things were covered in the media as concerns from users, but there was no satisfactory response.
Don't get me wrong. I love Google as a search engine. I could not live without it. However, as I said before [slashdot.org] companies change, and are driven by pragmatism, not ethics. Google is now a publicly traded company. Will they be the next evil Microsoft? Maybe. I hope not though.
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Re:It would be more commendable . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they delete messages. All it says in the TOS is that messages may not be deleted instantly, because it's a distributed storage system with a lot of backups.
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Gindows (Score:5, Funny)
'Will Google Launch A Browser?' (Score:5, Funny)
Long answer : Yes.
Web-based web-browser (Score:5, Funny)
I suspect that they will begin offering a web-based web-browsing solution (like gmail, but for HTTP) with roughly a gigabyte of bandwidth usage per day. This will no doubt be great competition for the other web-based web browsers, like
Er, wait a second...
Invite only... (Score:5, Insightful)
The invite system allows the system to reduce the amount of load at one time... reduce the amount of beta testing, etc.
GMail, GBrowse, GAnything -- they work because they remind people of this "wonderful" thing called google. As long as the letter G is associated with bigger and better, Google can send rumors of any google product...
Any press... any rumors... is good for google.
I honestly hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
This totally fits with Google's recent hires... (Score:5, Informative)
For some reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's about time (Especially after the IPO), that people would realize that google, is first and foremost a company that's "in-it" for the money.
with the word, money, being a key-word,
especially when it comes to its shareholders.
Soon enough, pressure from that direction would reach into company policy, and google would cease "doing no evil"
I suggest, that we should all objectively judge each and every new product or service that google offers.
Personally, I think a whole lot of very talented people are working together on the mozilla project, and they've been doing so for years.
Why would anyone with a right-mind think
that google could do any better in the short term?
If anything, A usable product is YEARS from being ready, and by that time, who knows how powerful and advanced firefox or some other "now-working" browser would become?
Will it use pigeons to display web content? (Score:5, Funny)
The power of G baby (Score:5, Funny)
As other fellow
Can't find the damn thing anyway.
Heavy XUL hooks could make this a killer (Score:5, Interesting)
The key is tying the apps to the browser. If its just yet-another gecko browser, this will have limited impact.
Re:Heavy XUL hooks could make this a killer (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure Google's competing with Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
I just made a stupid post..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine: The Google Desktop Environment.
Complete with Gbrowser, the universal filemanager/web browser/gmail client, uber everything all rolled into one.
Windows, Linux, Mac versions available now.
*shivers*
And, of course, all your 'google' apps are all cross-platform, since the client is all crazy java/web stuff anyways.
Sorta google toolbar on steroids.
Mozilla... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence we can have one more standard-conforming browser and, by using the reputation and power of Google, to ask those "View only with IE" sites to change!
Hmm, what could only a Google brand browser do? (Score:5, Interesting)
Recommending pages you might like by feeding your history/bookmarks into a central database?
Making google's web index more complete by flagging unindexed pages to HQ?
None of the aboue sound very convincing reasons to write a browser to me, However, Firefox + some bells & whistles with the Google name and clout behind it could kill IE stone dead... and the wide adoption of an ad-blocking browser would push advertisers towards google text ads in their droves.
The $64,000 question is, would this 'be evil'?
Re:the article (not like ny times will be /.'ed bu (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're trying to build their own browser, why would they want IE developers? If it were my business, I'd want guys who had developed a product that had to stand on its own merit to succeed. Building a product that is successful largely because of an illegal monopoly is less than impressive.
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Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
("English for Geeks" Tip of the Day: To obtain verbose output, include the keyword how at the beginning of your query.)
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Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article
Last month, Google hosted Mozilla Developer Day on its campus, a gathering of programmers that work together to build sequels to the re-named Netscape browser.
They might just jump on board and make a re-branded mozilla (or firefox, in fact probably firefox). The only problem with that is mozilla is still a touch flaky at times and I'm not sure that the current firefox designs will fit in with googles current design philosophy which is the embodiment of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Gmail for all it's little goodies is still very utilitarian, the google search engine itself is the epitomy of simplicity, firefox while an amazing piece of software and simpler than mozilla just doesn't have nearly this level of simplicity. Google may choose to go with firefox due to the already existing user base and code but doing something along the lines of Safari is certainly an option that must be considered (and considering googles history is something I'm very interested to see).
On the other hand this is all still a bunch of speculation. Look at the evidence so far, they have a former lead Java guy from Sun, also
The company also hired four people who worked on Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer, and later founded their own company. One of them, Adam Bosworth, is credited with being a driving force not only behind IE, but Microsoft's database-management program, Access.
Could be a browser yeah, but what did these guys do in this new company? Also note that the biggest hire was also a database guy.
Most recently, Google grabbed Joe Beda, the lead developer on Avalon, Microsoft's code name for the user interface that will part of the next version of Windows, called Longhorn.
Nice catch if you ignore the jokes about Microsoft UI but certainly nothing specific to web browsers there that I can see. More on mozilla day,
Mozilla, which is "open source" and available to anyone, could be shaped to Google's specifications and be embedded with Google search, Gmail free e-mail and other Google applications.
Seems to me that they're making the logical move of trying to see if they can get google stuff is integrated into mozilla. The last bit is perhaps the most telling,
Other blogs and analysts believe Google is working on an instant-messaging program and a Web browser to challenge Internet Explorer.
Well if bloggers and analysts are saying so then it MUST be true!! The fact is that google is everyones favorite company so we're rooting for it to get into the front lines of the browser wars, the place where Microsoft is considered most vulnerable by the geek population. I hope that google is working on a browser, I hope it will blow IE out of the water but there's a difference between wishful thinking and fact. Look at the main apps that google does have, google itself, the google toolbar, and gmail, wonderful apps but from a users perspective extremely simple and not subject to the whims of screwy users systems, I can't imagine them jumping into the browser wars where they don't hold all the cards (dependent on the OS) and the product is orders of magnitude more complex, I just don't think it's gonna happen.
The instant messaging program however, now that I can see, little more complex but still very simple and a somewhat natural extension for them (bring up ads and stuff based on conversations and easy searching in logs like gmail).
GTalk anyone?
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Re:I hope there is more to this. (Score:5, Insightful)
For the browser, all of Google's tools will be integrated. Think about this: spell checking when you post, the ability to click on "blog this (already available on Google's tool bar), interrelated Gmail, possibly image searching on your computer and on the internet simultaneously.
If the Google browser is good, free, and has no or only Google text ads, and has lots of features, I'll switch. If Google can make my life easier, I'm all for it.
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Re:Just part of the OS... (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's safe to say they've got big plans.
Little do you know, the G in GNU really stands for "Google's New Unix". They also own Gimp, Gnome, GTK, and Gator. That last one was just an insidious plot to create demand for their new pop-up blocking toolbar. Smart cookies, they are...
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Re:My guess... (Score:5, Funny)
> never caught on save for a few custom corporate apps.
Not to mention millions of spyware products.
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Re:Google Everything? (Score:5, Informative)
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