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Google Businesses Mozilla The Internet

Firefox Lead Now Working For Google 457

Posted by michael from the speculate-all-you-want-we'll-make-more dept.
zmarties writes "In a very low key announcement on his blog, Ben Goodger, lead developer for Firefox, has announce that effective from a couple of weeks ago, he has become a Google employee. In practice his day to day job won't change that much, in that he will still lead Firefox through its forthcoming releases, but with Google paying his wages, we can be sure that new and interesting overlap between the Mozilla Foundation's browsers and Google's services are sure to develop."
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Firefox Lead Now Working For Google More

Firefox Lead Now Working For Google

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  • Re:Google Toolbar for Firefox (Score:4, Informative)

    by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:02PM (#11462116)
    Now if Firefox had a version of the Google toolbar, which up to now it does not, I would switch in a hot minute.
    *Troll Alert*

    Firefox has always (since 0.1) had a Google Toolbar [mozdev.org] extension--not that find you need it as its built-in search functionality is so good.

  • Re:I was just thinking... (Score:5, Informative)

    by FrYGuY101 ( 770432 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:02PM (#11462118) Journal
    You may be kidding, but Google registered gbrowser.com/org/net [whois.net] for a reason...

  • Re:Free Time (Score:3, Informative)

    by DetrimentalFiend ( 233753 ) * on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:07PM (#11462175)
    Actually, it's 20% of their time.

  • Re:Corruption of FireFox Development? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:09PM (#11462209)
    Will Google now become the default search engine on FireFox? So, if you enter a faulty URL, then suddenly, the Google web page appears and presents you with alternative Web links?

    Uh, Google already is the default search engine.

    I prefer that the development team at FireFox be agnostic. Perhaps, now is the time to switch to Gecko. I hear that it is faster and has a tighter interface with Windows.

    Firefox uses Gecko.

    Lots of companies pay people to work on Mozilla, including IBM. It doesn't mean they do things only to benefit their employers.

  • Re:Corruption of FireFox Development? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:12PM (#11462231)
    "Will Google now become the default search engine on FireFox? So, if you enter a faulty URL, then suddenly, the Google web page appears and presents you with alternative Web links?"

    It already does that to an extent. If you type in a faulty URL, it goes through Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky".

  • Did you read the bug? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:13PM (#11462252)
    He did pay, and it's now marked as resolved.

  • ./ grammar (Score:2, Informative)

    by utopianfiat ( 774016 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:15PM (#11462267) Journal
    Ben Goodger, lead developer for Firefox, has announce that effective from a couple of weeks ago, he has become a Google employee.

    no offense to the poster, but: s/has announce/has announced/
    Grammar is what sets us apart from the script kiddie.

  • Re:This is bad (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:18PM (#11462313)
    "I could easily see some corruption of Firefox coming up, conflicts of interest, subliminal or overt advertising, and whatever else that comes with this kind of association."

    At which point being an open source project there will be a fork and a non evil version produced.
    Ain't having the source code great!

  • Re:Corruption of FireFox Development? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:19PM (#11462328)
    Err... Gecko is not a browser: it's a part of a browser called a layout engine. Firefox's layout engine? Gecko.

    From Wikipedia's layout engine entry:

    A web browser's layout engine takes content (HTML, XML, images, etc.) and formatting information (CSS, etc.) and computes a visual representation of the web page, usually for output on either a monitor or a printer.

    All web browsers necessarily include some form of layout engine. However, the term "layout engine" only reached popular usage when the Mozilla project designed its web browser's layout engine (Gecko) as a component that was separable from the browser. In other words, the Mozilla layout engine was reusable for web browsers besides Mozilla, and so people began to refer to Gecko as a distinct "layout engine" rather than merely a part of the web browser.

  • Re:So google is paying him to work on firefox? (Score:3, Informative)

    by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:22PM (#11462364)
    No, because it is not run by Ben Goodger but a non-profit organisation (Mozilla Foundation) for the public good and if they go bad you can fork it (except for the few proprietary bits of Firefox which don't really add to the functionality).

  • Re:Google Toolbar for Firefox (Score:3, Informative)

    by jsprat ( 442568 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:27PM (#11462419)
    I think you mean Hanlon's razor [wikipedia.org]:
    "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

  • Not the End of the World (tm) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Codeala ( 235477 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:32PM (#11462477)

    Ben Goodger is "just" the lead developer, not to take anything from his contributions to the Firefox project, but the project will go on even when he work for another employer or "turn evil" as some seems to think.

    The open source model is not a dictatorship, especially on a large project like mozilla/firefox, not one single person has complete control over everything.
    The news of Mr Goodger change of employer is no more shocking than programmers from different countries/companies contribute code to various open source projects. There is no "hidden agenda" or "conflict of interest".

    Anyone that has concern about this, become a developer: http://www.mozilla.org/developer/

  • Re:Corruption of FireFox Development? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:36PM (#11462526)
    Please...more conspiracy theorys...
    I doubt that Time-Warner would allows its employees, on company time
    Well, that is why TW has a bad name and Google is kown as an ethical company. Google actually allow their employees a proportion of their work time to do their own projects. Anyway, the non-profit for-the-public-good MF is in charge of Firefox and it can always be forked if they go bad (except for the negligble proprietary components of Firefox).
    So, if you enter a faulty URL, then suddenly, the Google web page appears and presents you with alternative Web links?
    ATM if you enter a word or phrase that doesn't look like a URI it searches Google and takes you to the page at the top of the Google results. Personally I think it should ask you the first time whether you want it to do this (just in case it scares people), but, except that, this seems sensible.
    Perhaps, now is the time to switch to Gecko.
    Gecko is the rendering engine (backend) used by Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, Netscape, Galleon, &c, so, if you use any of those browsers, you already use Gecko.

  • Re:Put it to the test (Score:3, Informative)

    by siliconjunkie ( 413706 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:37PM (#11462533)
    Done [slashdot.org]

  • Re:I'm... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SimplexO ( 537908 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @07:38PM (#11462543) Homepage
    Without you knowing it, several of the people employed to work on Firefox 1.0 (and have been working for a long time) recieve paychecks with other companies such as Rracle, Red Had, and IBM.

    It's like Google is 'sponsoring' a worker for the Mozilla Foundation, like you used to do to raise money when you were a kid.

  • Re:proof in the pudding (Score:5, Informative)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) * on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:22PM (#11463029) Homepage
    "Proof in the pudding"

    I think the proverb you were looking for is actually:

    The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

    Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to find that guy who "could care less".

  • Re:proof in the pudding (Score:2, Informative)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:31PM (#11463113) Homepage
    Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to find that guy who "could care less".

    Well, if someone posts somewhere about something, saying they could care less, they are factually and linguistically entirely correct. They could care less - and not post at all.

  • Firefox users can block Google's ads (Score:3, Informative)

    by Everyman ( 197621 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @09:46PM (#11463707) Homepage
    A CSS file can be used in Firefox to block Google's ads. Complete instructions are here [scroogle.org] at the bottom of the page. Google approves if you do this. After all, their toolbar blocks pop-ups. And Firefox has great cookie control. If you don't want to block Google's cookie because you use Gmail or other services that require it, you can turn that 2038 cookie into a session cookie. That way Google gives you a new unique ID with every session, instead of one ID that lasts until 2038.

  • About the config (Score:5, Informative)

    by PromANJ ( 852419 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @11:07PM (#11464213) Homepage Journal
    Type about:config in the url to bring up the config then in the filter field type search. That will list the relevant config settings I think. I had trouble finding any good explaination for all the settings in the config. I wish they had made an little info button or alt hover text text for each setting.

  • Re:Ben leaves for Google, Hyatt left for Apple (Score:3, Informative)

    by mu_wtfo ( 224511 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @12:51AM (#11464959) Homepage
    Hyatt has been working for Apple since before there was a Firefox, before there was a Firebird, and nearly before there was a Phoenix.
    He was hired in July, 2002, right around the time the very first test builds of Phoenix were making the rounds. He was, as I recall, one of the main people behind a project called "mozilla/browser" (or m/b for short), which was kind of a spiritual predecessor to what is now Firefox.

    And if you want to see what he's contributed since, take a look around http://tinderbox.mozilla.org. (I'm not linking to all of his chekins out of respect for the server)

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