Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, says they won’t build a browser.
But still some Slashdotters see a browser under Google’s bed, after grokking this Mozillanews.org story. What if…well…what if they don’t build a browser, but rather, well, lease one from Mozilla?
The juicy bits:
…after weeks of analysis, this is where we think Gbrowser is headed.
The overlap is looking like a Google branded and customized Firefox based browser. To help set it apart from the rest of the browser crowd, they’re integrating a lot of their own technologies. Since Firefox does not contain a mail app, they’re integrating Gmail for email access, with a built in new-mail notifier. Interestingly, mailto: urls will work with Gmail, allowing peple to click email links in pages and have Gmail open a new mail to that address, as well as IE-like buttons on the toolbar for composing new mail from scratch.
Newsgroups will be built in similar to Gmail with the Google Groups service, and possibly the ability to select groups to watch, like in a full fledged newsreader (like Mozilla Thunderbird). And Google News will also have built in access from the browser along with Google Alerts or a similar, RSS-based feature.
Other features include better search integration, with the extra features such as Image Searching by right clicking on an image or selected word. As Silicon.com found there is also a Google branded IM service on the way as well, and could be a Jabber or rebranded AIM also coming bundled with the browser.
There are other, extra-browser features that will most likely come with it, and tie into the browser, such as Google Desktop Search, Picasa (with links to the browser for web-related sharing, searching, etc.), and Google Toolbar features that IE users currently enjoy…
I can only hope that they’re serious about not making a browser. Once the Google book-search launched with a DRM system that exploited browser vulnerabilities to remove features from your computer while you looked at their site (something that violates the spirit and possibly the letter of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), I lost all confidence in a Google-branded browser.
Google doesn’t need to build the browser, just like they don’t need to build a desktop OS. Firefox will beat IE (in a year or so, my estimate, after news of version 1.0 spreads to less geeky media and finds new non-technical adopters), so then Google will have a ‘platform’ to build upon. They don’t need to build a browser, they don’t need to even lease it, I think, they can just build powerful, rich, desktop app-like extensions.
Now that I think about it, is anyone ‘keeping track’ of that MS guy who worked on IE before Google hired him? Is Google investing/contributing people/time/anything into Firefox development, by any chance?