Google Planning Web Browser? 387
Kick the Donkey writes "John Dvorak has just posted a very interesting, albeit hypothetical, analysis of Google's future directions. Citing the 'unusual' hires of Rob Pike (from Bell labs), Ben Goodger, and Darin Fisher (both from Mozilla) and the acquisition of the gbrowser.com domain, Dvorak speculates that a Firefox based Google browser and Google-OS may soon be coming to a cluster near you."
Dupe (mostly) (Score:3, Interesting)
My wish... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish... (Score:3, Interesting)
Google is not developing a browser! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why the jump to OS? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is such old news (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it more credible now that Slashdot's found the story?
Settle down boy (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's interest in Firefox shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. At the end of the day, 90+% of Google's users are accessing its service through the browser created and controlled by its largest competitor. Would you feel comfortable if customers had to walk through your competitor's shop to get to your own? This is really what Firefox is all about from a strategic standpoint, and this is what "it's just a browser!" naysayers are missing: he who owns the window to the web owns the web. When there's one porthole on the ship, everyone has to look through it. Firefox seeks to add more portholes to make sure people really understand what's going on outside.
If they're planning an entire OS to make codifying and searching your data easier, I can't see that happening anytime in the short-term. After all, awhile back there was a shoot-out of desktop search tools, and the Google Desktop Search wasn't top-ranked (yet).
- shadowmatter
Re:Advertising Tool? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I doubt google would do something that foolish.
How about browser-in-browser thin client services? (Score:5, Interesting)
yeah... right (Score:1, Interesting)
How Microsoft got scared (Score:3, Interesting)
An operation system by most accounts that I have heard is the program that handles devices, files & filesystem, processes(process manager), and I/O(input/output).
Processes written in JavaScript and/or a server-side language, I/O through the browser interface, files through WebDAV, and how is a web UA not an operating system? This is what scared Microsoft into adopting its anti-Netscape strategy.
Re:What's with the stupid google predictions? (Score:3, Interesting)
No... It's perfectly obvious what that would mean:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~paulo/courses/howmake/m
Re:How about browser-in-browser thin client servic (Score:5, Interesting)
This will be the death of MS, but as other posters have said, it is scary as all hell. Google is a nice company now, but this kind of power concentrated in 1 companies hands will prove horrible for the net.
not that kind of browser? (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe they aren't building a web browser. Google is in the information organization sector. (you may argue they are in the ad business, but that business is dependent upon their core business of analyzing data). The more logical conclusion in my opinion is if they are building a "gbrowser" that it's a file system browser application. Something that arranges info better than Microsofts Windows Explorer thingie.
Just my two cents. I doubt this is even true, they most likely just registered the domain name as a provision.
Re:Why the jump to OS? (Score:2, Interesting)
the gbrowser. (Score:2, Interesting)
- they registered a domain (gbrowser.com)
- they are hiring people who worked on IE at Microsoft (there's an interview with a MS employee about that at NYTimes)
- they hired the man behind the success of Firefox
- they hired numerous people that worked on Netscape
- Fritz Schneider a Google employee (software engineer) is fixing bugs on Mozilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253
And I accidently found that "A Mozilla bug was marked closed with this comment, This is a duplicate of a private bug about working with Google. So closing this one."
Seriously, they master web searching and email, they released a software to manipulate digital images, they released Blogger, desktop search, purchased Keyhole, released the Google toolbar,... Their every product is web sentric in some way.
I think the question one might ask is 'why wouldn't Google make a web browser?'
The company lives on ads, just think about how much would an ad cost in a browser that ~50 million people use. It could be something similar as Opera's ad but displaying 'Google relevant ads', or it could be something completely different. As I said I think Google will release a browser this year and it will be highly integrated with gmail and blogger.
OS assumes the role of a BIOS (Score:5, Interesting)
How does Firefox assign and keep track of memory? Last I checked, it used system calls, which are part of the OS.
How does Windows or Linux put your computer to sleep? Last I checked, it used ACPI calls, which are part of the BIOS. In the case of browser-as-platform, the host OS (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc.) assumes the role of a BIOS. Replacing the BIOS with something a bit more powerful [linuxbios.org] could eliminate that middleman altogether.
Re:Why the jump to OS? (Score:2, Interesting)
hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Has Google done anything new? Not really. Much like the early Microsoft, they simply take existing ideas and improve them. Google wasn't the first search engine. They weren't the first webmail provider. They weren't the first web site that searched Usenet (in MS fashion, they bought deja). Even Picasa, which they bought, is being transformed into a PC version of iPhoto.
Based on their past history, it wouldn't surpise me if they were to boldly attack Microsoft on browser, OS or even on an Office-type product.
Live USB key? (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of your stuff is on-line. Your "computer" is online + on your keychain.
They won't need to sell hardware, you won't need an OS on your computer (except for games), you won't think about virii anymore.
Of course, this is all pure speculation. OTH, John Dvorak has been right a hella-lot-more than he's been wrong. He may be on to something.
Re:Why the jump to OS? (Score:3, Interesting)
IMO, Google's shooting itself in the foot with a browser and a distro, and in a couple years we'll be seeing news releases that state that Google's abandoned those projects.
That said, I'm sure the OSS community would welcome the extra investment from google.
Google Ads (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to provide some extra value or service to the desktop that made people feel ok about the ads.
I don't think they'll abuse the users like those free internet services of the '90's. People will still have the option to not use them.
The guys at Google are pretty smart. If they do go this route, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Also, with some serious competition, it'll be nice to see Microsoft be more inovative and customer friendly.
Google Office? (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider that XUL has a lot of the capabilities that let users get a good UI in browsers. Consider also that Google already has zillions of hefty servers dotted around. If they extended XUL as required and created e.g. GoogleWord, GoogleExcel and GooglePoint, users could create and store their docs in a secured, always-there backend similar to that used by Gmail. Imagine logging into Gmail and having all your documents stored with your email, labelled (as for Gmail messages) into one or more categories and searchable - I can see that being very attractive for many people.
Yep, there's obviously a few bits missing:
- MS Office document compatibility (but is that such an issue if Google can change user's work habits such that people exchange pointers to GoogleOffice docs rather than the docs themselves? Maybe all they need is an MS Office import/export facility, which reads/writes docs in MS' published XML format from a server located in a country that is suitably patent-free...)
- something to allow documents to be embedded within other documents (wonder what percentage of MS Office users actually use this)
- XUL would need beefing up in terms of capability
- 100 others...
Still, given Google's deep pockets, I don't see these issues as insurmountable. Given that (IMHO) 90% of MS Office users only ever use 10% of MS Office's functionality, a sort-of WordPad on steroids may be enough to get a critical mass of people to switch to using GoogleWord provided they solve other MS-Office-centric issues such as document management on PCs, viruses/spyware and so on.
Re:Forget about Google you guys. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's dead on. I mean the things that Google has done that are direct privacy violations in the last couple of years should have taken the shine right off them. Yet look how brightly they glow in a large percentage of the
How many hundreds or thousands of people here gladly gave up any semblance of email privacy to sign up for GMail, who have also unthoughtfully exposed their poor friends and relatives to having their email unwittingly scanned as well.
At this point I can't help mentally picturing Google fans, clutching at everything the company does even as they erode their privacy, like Golum clutching The Ring as he falls to his doom.
Re:Why the jump to OS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux is hard to use and clunky (so the masses think).
Not that you were saying they would...
zerg (Score:5, Interesting)
This could be the last step in world domination... (Score:3, Interesting)
Course there are other nice things you could do like define your own request types for pulling meta-data, etc.
Let's face it. Google is in the position that Micro$oft has been in for a while, only in the web space as opposed to the OS space. (Case in Point [google.com]) They could finally convince people to get on board the semantic express
If Google just sticks to their motto, they'll be fine.
Dvorak should be ignored. He's losing it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why the jump to OS? (Score:3, Interesting)