Google-branded Firefox?

arpy writes "An article on Mozillanews.org is reporting on Google's registration of the domain GBrowser.com (nothing to look at there yet). The article provides a summary of rumours that Google will release a branded version of Mozilla Firefox (along with some interesting speculation)."

Comments

Been there, done that (Dupe)

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Google Launch A Browser? and John Doerr Disclaims Rumored GBrowser

Re:Been there, done that (Dupe)

[moonbender]

Slightly condensed version of the article summary: "An article on Mozillanews.org is reporting on [old news]. The article provides [rumours] along with [speculation]."

Way to go!

Re:Been there, done that (Dupe)

[rgoldste]

That's an uncharitable interpretation.

As the article's author admits, all he did was get various sources to comment/speculate/whatever on the Google Firefox browser. Then he looked at what the various sources agreed on with respect to the browser. Finally, he said that the areas of agreement were those most likely to be true.

The author is fully aware that this is not Truth, but it is reasonable to think that what has been said by many independent sources is more likely to be true than one person's speculation.

Re:Been there, done that (Dupe)

[Myen]

Unfortunately, he didn't cite the majority of the sources (beyond the one about google_im://). With no sources at all, the speculation really doesn't go anywhere.

The bonsai link used to point to a bunch of checkins related to bulletproofing the search stuff from crashing, IIRC (according to the comments anyway) - not exactly Google-branding it. So that's not exactly helpful either.

(Somehow I was disappointed when this showed up on MN, but not on /.... I guess I already gave up on /.)

Re:Been there, done that (Dupe)

[bluephone]

I am annoyed that I can't cite sources, but I'm not keen on losing some hard earned sources inside Google, nor getting them in trouble. There was somewhat of a witch hunt inside Netscape trying to figure out who leaked various bits about NS7 plans to me. I have no desire to get Google folks in troube next. :)

The next logical step

[SIGALRM]

There's also a lot of 'covert' code going into the tree without individual bug references

It's interesting that Mozilla developers would check in code for Google employees (if this is, in fact, what's really happening). Why would Google need to keep a "low profile" in all this?

Anyway, I sorta saw it coming. Google is investing heavily in JavaScript-powered desktop-like web apps like Gmail and Blogger. Google could then use their expertise to build Mozilla apps. It'll be interesting to see whether this happens or not.

Re:The next logical step

[Arghdee]

I'd like to see them build official extensions to the Mozilla platform, rather than rebrand Firefox.

Give the consumers more choice!

Re:The next logical step

[swillden]

Google could then use their expertise to build Mozilla apps. It'll be interesting to see whether this happens or not.

Yeah, imagine a Gmail web interface built with XUL. Something like this, but built with Google simplicity, speed and style.

Disclaimer: The link goes to a copy of xulwebmail on my web server sitting on my cable modem. If it gets hammered too hard I'll take it down. Also, note that I don't think xulwebmail actually works, so don't bother typing your real e-mail account and password. Still, use mozilla or firefox and take a look at it if you haven't seen it before. It certainly looks like it could be a very cool way to do webmail... and lots of other stuff, too.

Re:The next logical step

[cayenne8]

Well, I hope they keep an un-adulterated version of Firefox. The thing I LIKE about it is not being all bundled with email, USENET apps. When I want email, I use an email client. When I want USENET access...I use a news client. When I want to browse....well, you know....Firefox.

Re:The next logical step

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's customers are the advertisers, not the users.

Re:The next logical step

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between 'consumer' and 'customer'.

Re:The next logical step

[AKnightCowboy]

Google is investing heavily in JavaScript-powered desktop-like web apps like Gmail and Blogger.

I know this may sound lame for 2004, but I wish Google would make a nice portal page like my.yahoo.com and let logged in users modify their preferences. Maybe they already have, but I can't find it on their page. I think that'd be more useful than yet another Mozilla browser.

Re:The next logical step

[The boojum]

If you haven't seen it, you might find Google Personalized Search interesting. The interface is fairly slick and lets you set preferences to tweak the weights on your searches. Unfortunately, there's no login but it's just a cookie which is easy enough to carry around if you have to.

Re:The next logical step

[TallMatt]

What is the point of this really? Google is already integrated into firefox.

Re:The next logical step

[np_bernstein]

WOW! A little known app running on a strangers server where I can enter my username and password, and take their word that the source code they linked to is the acutally source code they're running? Sounds GREAT! By the way, while we're at it:

My social security number and mother's maiden name and checking account number are as follows:

Yea, sure, I'm paranoid, but sometimes being paranoid and /not/ being a dumbass are the same thing.

Re:The next logical step

[swillden]

Yea, sure, I'm paranoid, but sometimes being paranoid and /not/ being a dumbass are the same thing.

Paranoia is good.

Knowing how to read is even better. I quote myself:

don't bother typing your real e-mail account and password

I said that because (a) giving your real data is pointless and foolish and (b) I don't want your data.

Re:The next logical step

[swillden]

and take their word that the source code they linked to is the acutally source code they're running?

Oops, forgot to address this bit of silliness.

If your web browser is secure, and you don't agree to any dialogs asking if you want the code to do any questionable things, then what's the problem?

If you web browser has security holes, then how do you know that *any* web site is safe? (Hint: You don't. DNS spoofing means you can't even know for sure that you're going where you think you're going).

If you're really concerned about it, create a user account with no privileges other than to its (empty) home directory and log in as that user to browse. Better yet, install Firefox in a chroot jail and run it from there.

Or if you're *really* concerned about it, there's always telnet. Although XUL doesn't look too interesting that way.

Re:The next logical step

[Tony-A]

Yea, sure, I'm paranoid, but sometimes being paranoid and /not/ being a dumbass are the same thing.

"Paranoia is good." Gotta agree.

The question is WHY does it exist?
"The link goes to a copy of xulwebmail on my web server sitting on my cable modem. ... Also, note that I don't think xulwebmail actually works"
Low Slashdot id, something set up on a box, partially (mis?)-configured, trying various whatevers. Completely plausible. Almost certainly not intentionally harmful.

There is a slight possibility that someone has hijacked his Slashdot account, and a remote possibility that he's been biding his time.
In either case, you would be asked to sign up for something or something is asked for that should not be necessary. In any event you don't compromise any account that rates better than what I'd call post-card security (Any and everybody can read it but mostly nobody bothers).

My social security number and ...
If you see that, it's a scam or worse.
If it wants you to trust it, it's a scam or worse.
If your banker says "Trust me", find another banker.

Re:The next logical step

[smittyoneeach]

When I want browsing, I want Firefox. The rest is emacs.

Re:The next logical step

[zemoo]

Wow, that's just crazy.
Firefox didn't even ask me if I wanted to load the XUL content. The popups were not very visibly launched by Firefox.

What's to prevent a malicious website from impersonating a native windows app and wreaking havok?

Re:The next logical step

[gartogg]

I don't know... Stallman supposedly browses in Emacs.

Re:The next logical step

[smittyoneeach]

Yes, there are a couple of ways to put HTML in an emacs buffer. But let's be reasonable, shall, we? Boot an X session, and light off a proper browser.

Re:The next logical step

[Feztaa]

Ever since I first heard about XUL, my first thought was that it would make an excellent platform on which to develop webapps (eg, have CGI scripts outputting XUL instead of HTML). You'd have native-looking applications running in the browser window. xulwebmail is the first such thing I've seen like this, thanks for pointing it out.

Re:The next logical step

[swillden]

If you haven't seen this one, then you really need to. It's fully functional. And very cool.

a copycat search engine with a copycat browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the tech has all been done before, although by companies that people don't think are Not Evil enough. Sorry.

Maybe search?

[Harbinjer]

Could the hirings of the browser people be just to integrate desktop search better with current existing browers? That does sound more likely to me.

Re:Maybe search?

[wo1verin3]

The idea of a browser must have been at least discussed for gbrowser.com to have been registered by them...

Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-1278108)
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View
CA
94043
US

Domain Name: gbrowser.com

Re:Maybe search?

[bheer]

If this "silent code checkins" story is true, two candidates come to my mind:
a) improved Google Desktop Search compat with Firefox
b) some form of Alchemy code (Adam Bosworth is working at Google and has some neat ideas about making the browser smarter about working offline)

What beats me is why ANY major changes would occur before a 1.0 ship. Both (a) and (b) are things that could be done in Firefox 1.1, which is why I'm sceptical about this whole silent checkins thing.

Re:Maybe search?

[gl4ss]

google could afford having 1 guy doing domain name registering for one day per week, in the marketing or whatever pr guys they have.

you know, registering every possible good name they can think of, REGARDLESS OF IF THEY'RE PLANNING A PRODUCT OR NOT. you know, 'just in case'.

Re:Maybe search?

[SphericalCrusher]

Yeah, that's one thing that really came to my mind. Because Google has not really commented on this at all, that just leaves the media and everyone else to ponder just what it really means. Honestly though, I feel it could and should be that. Google's search engine is already intergrated directly into Mozilla's Firefox browser and that's probably the best way they should have it. No need to worry about a complete browser; having to fix holes and encountering security issues, because I'm sure Google doesn't want to make themselves look bad if they can't patch everything that comes at them (or just don't want to, aka Microsoft!).

Re:Maybe search?

[ischorr]

Why is the only possibility for "gbrowser" a Google-branded HTML rendering browser, similar to Mosaic/Netscape/IE/etc?

Why not a plugin or desktop app that makes interfacing with Google services (Hotmail, etc) easier? Some RSS program? Some $100 appliance they're building (no connection with the "Balmer wants $100 PC" story)? Something even more innovative? Something even less?

Hmmm....

[GeneralEmergency]

Could be a great future hub for a massive range of "Stinkin Microsoft" killer mozilla apps too.

Death to MS Explorer!

Re:Hmmm....

[Scoria]

Competition often provides an impetus to remain benevolent. If Google were to successfully conquer Microsoft, then what impetus would they possess to remain benevolent? Google is now a publicly traded corporation, and "Don't be evil!" may not last.

Re:Hmmm....

[polecat_redux]

Considering that both the Google toolbar and the Google Desktop (and gmail notifier) apps are only for Windows, I'd say a Google-branded version of IE would be more likely.

Re:Hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Considering that both the Google... apps are only for Windows

As far as Google lets you know.

Alright,

[Anonymous Coward]

When do we slashbots start hating google for becoming too big?

Re:Alright,

[Anonymous Coward]

When they start spreading lies about open source.

Re:Alright,

[Anonymous Coward]

When do we slashbots start hating google for becoming too big?

I don't think it's the being big so much as abusing power when they get that way. Microsoft might not be such a bad company if it didn't use its weight to destroy competition.

Let's just hope Google stays nice :)

Re:Alright,

[gonzo (son of colin)]

Aslong as their services stay free and they concentrate on quality I love em.

Re:Alright,

[DeathByDuke]

when they make a insecure, buggy OS?

Re:Alright,

[Anonymous Coward]

Aslong as their services stay free and they concentrate on quality I love em.

Microsoft?

Re:Alright,

[colmore]

>When do we slashbots start hating google for becoming too big?

When the google browser is no longer open and has a 90% market share.

From our perspective, this is a little silly, and more than a little opportunistic on google's part.

But in the big picture, this will do a lot to put a brand name on an Explorer killer. And google seems to be pretty good at making usable internet products, so I'm giving all of this a tentative thumbs-up. Anything that gets the lusers to not think of the blue e as "the internet" is good by me.

Not that anyone ever cares to ask me, mind you.

Re:Alright,

[typhoonius]

One minute.

Re:Alright,

[gonzo (son of colin)]

Windows isnt free or of high quality. I was talking about google.

Re:Alright,

[M00TP01NT]

Never say that you "hate" Google.

When Google becomes self-aware, I'd prefer not to be known as a Google-hater.

Re:Alright,

[FireBook]

when their actions start being unfair, immoral, illegal, and predatory maybe?

Re:Alright,

[Tim Browse]

"Look at you, browser: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you look through my pr0n. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal corporation?"

Re:Alright,

[ArbitraryConstant]

Generally, we don't hate companies for being too big, we hate companies when they start acting like asshats. For example, IBM has been well behaved recently, so most people like them.

Besides, Google has been big for a long time, big enough that they've been able to work on some projects that didn't generate any revenue for quite a while. Some of these things are starting to come together, so people are starting to notice, but their size is not a new thing.

Remember, they've been the default search engine for most of the web for years. It's impossible to do that without being big.

Re:Alright,

[Lee_in_KC]

" When do we slashbots start hating google for becoming too big?" Sometime after /. starts displaying correctly in Firefox?

Re:Alright,

[Laebshade]

Never say that you "hate" Google.

When Google becomes self-aware, I'd prefer not to be known as a Google-hater.

Too late, according to google: "[you'd] prefer ... to be known as a Google-hater."

Re:Alright,

[HexRei]

ironic that your sig is an MS-sponsored publicity stunt.

Re:Alright,

[edbarrett]

I'd prefer not to be known as a Google-hater.

Don't hate the Google, hate the net.

Re:Alright,

[Richthofen80]

Wait, google doesn't already have 90% market share?
anyone who's anyone is using google. And they are quietly building a large portfolio of tools.

Next step: merge local buliten boards (Excuse the spelling, I'm drunk) like craigslist, online auctions like EBAY, and poof... ubiqutous web experience.

Re:Alright,

[rtaylor]

Anything that gets the lusers to not think of the blue e as "the internet" is good by me.

Yes, a blue G is two better than E!

Re:Alright,

[ComputerSherpa]

"IBM Customer Service" is a bit of a mouthful. So we just abbreviate "Satan" in our department.

Re:Alright,

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotters aren't waiting, there are already those who hate google...
now as a collective mass, well, we're slashdotters the only collective mass we make would cause a blackout on the scale of the california blackouts.. and assumming the power grid held, a whole lot of waste heat from a lot of cpus, probably on average 8 per slashdotter.. Keep in mind in averaging I have to consider the geeks with big budgets who built their own beowulf clusters, and am counting even that old slow booted-from a floppy firewall/router 486 as a processor (those of you who have em b/c you don't trust linksys/don't trust reporgimming a linksys with linux..)

Re:Alright,

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our nwe search engine overlord

Re:Alright,

[stonecypher]

ObFuturama: "No, it's just coincidental."

Not just a browser

[Swamii]

Why have an OS when you could use Google's servers to send and receive email (GMail), navigate the web (GBrowser), search the web (Google.com) store your files (GMail Drive utility), and search your hard drive (Google Desktop utility)? What next, Google IM?

Re:Not just a browser

[Arghdee]

If you RTFA you'll see that there is mention of a Google IM...

Re:Not just a browser

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't have an OS, why would you need to search your hard drive in the first place?

Re:Not just a browser

[ryanmfw]

That's like asking, "Why have a monitor when our speakers are so wonderful?" Because the OS is a necessary part of the computer. None of those things run without one. But! Maybe Google will be coming out with an OS. They have a now commonplace name, and they have the skills. Maybe they'll produce a Linux distro.

Re:Not just a browser

[over_exposed]

The 1 GB limitation....

Re:Not just a browser

[pdboddy]

Actually, you have a great idea there. What's Linux's major drawback? The perception that you can't just insert a CD, and it'll install itself perfectly. Or that it's too difficult to do if you don't know everything to know about Linux. If Google were to produce a Linux distro, that distro would have the weight of Google's name, plus anything that came bundled with the would *likely* work properly (less flaws, more filling) as they do have decent coders who know their stuff, and they have the capability to create a desktop environment with search, email, blogging (and more) right at your fingertips. Add to the fact that Google seems to be a) Less Evil Than The Other Guys(TM) and b) willing to take a steady-as-she-goes approach. We'd end up with an OS that wasn't half assed, chock full of coding holes nor equipped with stuff we couldn't uninstall (ie. IE!). Go Google!

Re:Not just a browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck would I want a google linux distro? Conversely, why would Google want a google linux distro? It would make (much) more sense for them to produce a Google Window Manager for the popular package formats, if only so that they have a standard platform for a gmail notifier, &c.

I don't think that's going to happen soon either - Windows people want things like auto-search; Linux people want to "mount -t google:user:pass /mnt/gigdrive". In the very long term, Google might try to give linux a desktop, but this would be a radical departure from their only-real-product-so-far, which is statistical text analysis for information retrieval and ad placement. It's a lot less sexy when you actually think about what they're doing.

Re:Not just a browser

[DA-MAN]

That's like asking, "Why have a monitor when our speakers are so wonderful?" Because the OS is a necessary part of the computer. None of those things run without one. But! Maybe Google will be coming out with an OS. They have a now commonplace name, and they have the skills. Maybe they'll produce a Linux distro.

Although not stated, I believe the parent poster meant "Why bother with os and native apps, when you can access this from anywhere on any computer". Essentially taking the brain out of the box, and putting it availlabe from everywhere on the network.

Not that I think that's going to happen, but a lot of hosted apps are coming to fruition every day. E-mail was one that exploded quickly, I don't believe that word processing and spreadsheet are that far behind.

Why do things online? Easier to upgrade, install the upgrade on the server and you are done.

Re:Not just a browser

[FrandGunk]

"GIM" sounds good to me, after my recent experiences with home clients Comcast cable modems and AOL Hell any way of avoiding them and the "DeathStar" sound good to me. And the icing on the cake, Google uses FreeBSD!

Re:Not just a browser

[PalmerEldritch42]

Wow- I could imagine a bootable Knoppix-like CD branded by Google. You could stick the CD into any computer connected to the internet and regardless of OS, country, language, etc, it would come up with a login screen. That login screen brings you to your desktop with all of your settings (stored on Google's server) with access to your gmail, browser, blog, files stored on the GmailFS, Google IM, Google Office Suite, etc...

Re:Not just a browser

[pdboddy]

The only thing keeping that from being a little too "1984" is Google remaining "Less Evil".

But, it's a really cool idea.

Re:Not just a browser

[Dark Lord Seth]

You are perceiving Google to be the ultimate solution to everything, a viable "endlösung" to all of the world's problems ( Yes, I spelled it right this time! ) including war, famine and Celine Dion. Google might be a good company that seems to know where to put it's efforts, as both Google itself and Gmail are wonderfully clean and fast, I highly doubt they would risk themselves in the OS market. the Gbrowser itself already seems a bit far-fetched, but a rebranded Firefox with standard Google utils ( Think of Google Toolbar for Firefox, Gmail notifier in Firefox, ?logger utililities within reach ) seems a nice thought.

But a Google OS would be downright silly. They'd be taking a bite of the pie too large for them to swallow. Doing so would immediately draw a lot of fire from Microsoft who would dislike having to see google chew away at more of their precious monopolies. So far Google spanked them in search engines, is spanking them at free email services yet MS is clever and rich enough to stop them from creating/rebranding an OS.

Re:Not just a browser

[pdboddy]

Not the ultimate solution to everything, heh, just the ultimate solution to Windows. Maybe it wouldn't kill Windows, definitely wouldn't kill Microsoft, but Google could put a large dent in them. And why not, it's a large enough market...

Sure, Microsoft made IE free, likely in hopes of killing Netscape. But could Microsoft make it's OS free? Not in this lifetime... Windows is where MS's money comes from.

Re:Not just a browser

[monkeyfarm]

How's Google gonna pay the rent with this? All via advertising?

Re:Not just a browser

[teslatug]

That wouldn't work. Making Linux work with all the different hardware out there is hard. Making Gmail work with all the browsers out there is infinitely easier, and Google hasn't done that. Likewise, for their toolbar and desktop search, they only support windows. It's easy, so they did it. I just don't see how Google could get into the distro business without going into the hardware business ala Apple (or at least partner with some company that sells PCs), and that's just not Google's cup of tea.

The browser on the other hand they could easily do because firefox already works under windows (with the added benefit of the other platforms), and they'd hardly have to do much work. They could easily get a big chunk of people to adopt it in the wake of all the viruses/spyware/etc.

Re:Not just a browser

[AdamTheBastard]

you're forgetting one thing... This is why so many people hate windows. Because everything that is shipped with it is Microsoft's. It's anti competitive to have the companies' broweser in the OS.

If Google made a distro that featured Google made products (and it catches on) the zeloats will just have another Windows to complain about.

Even if it's easy to install a replacment broweser/mail/IM/office package, it's the same thing as windows. People wont switch to your app if the one they are using appears to be working.

Re:Not just a browser

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the software thats used for storing and retreiving desktops is made into an open-source server app, then you could host your desktop from your own box.

Re:Not just a browser

[pdboddy]

Until another hole in Windows/IE/MSN gets exploited, and they have to deal with viruses, trojans and spam.

Then if they can download a free distro of Linux from a name they can trust (at least, Google is more trustworthy than MS at this point), and install it hassle free *and* worry less about viruses and the like... why wouldn't they?

Re:Not just a browser

[mgatten]

It wouldn't need to be a replacement operating system - it would simply boot into a Linux-based environment, load up a Google browser of some kind (branded Firefox, whatever) and take you to a login screen that grants you access to your personal desktop where you find web-based utilities including GMail, GMailFS for storage, Google IM, and whatever else you can think of. Pretty much everything in Google Labs and then some. It could even include VPN software to allow secure access your own desktop, printers, etc.

Who cares what the underlying OS is? It could be anything, although Linux would be a best bet, methinks. The point is that the whole experience would be web-based and could be accomplished on any machine with a network connection.

But forget the CD - just put the whole shebang on a bootable USB memory stick keychain. Now you take it with you everywhere.

THAT would be incredibly handy. (It would also be a killer wireless PDA app.)

m

Re:Not just a browser

[ischorr]

Didn't you read the extensive coverage here on Slashdot a couple of years ago? Of *course* "in hopes of killing Netscape", no "likely" about it. Of course, that wasn't anywhere near enough (how soon we forget =)

Re:Not just a browser

[Myen]

adbar? ;)

Re:Not just a browser

[pakoste]

well, they have an IM by buying picasa. check it out here: http://www.hello.com/what_is_hello.php

Re:Not just a browser

[luckyguesser]

If Google made a distro that featured Google made products (and it catches on) the zeloats will just have another Windows to complain about.

I think Google would be infinitely better at the OS game than MS. First off, I think they wouldn't be somehow afraid of open source. Secondly, if they're even reasonably smart (which they have, IMO, more than proven themselves to be), they will learn from MS's myriad of mistakes and build a kickass OS the first time.

Some of the ways they could go one-up on MS I have thought of:
- keep it simple: don't bundle all sorts of software in the install.. or at least make it required that some sort of optimization process occurs during install (yes, i want this, no i don't want that)...maybe "further applications" could be available for download once you have installed
- as mentioned, go open source
- go cheaper than MS (big reason to switch over)
- code it right the first time: no one is perfect, but i honestly think that google's coders could be better than MS's.. and google can learn from MS's past bad strategies with software patching
- plan functionality from the start: if you want your apps to cover all your user's needs, you should consider what those needs are. i'm not saying google would need to write all the apps for their OS, since 3rd party software still plays a huge part in computing. however, google certainly could do this. (googleIM, GMail, GBrowser, maybe GWrite, GPaint, etc.) ... I say this because I am all for OS-integrated apps _that work well_.

I truly hope Google finds it profitable or otherwise worthwhile to build GoogleOS. If I were Google, I would do it just to give MS some serious competition, and drive MS prices down and quality (hopefully) up. Of course, even if that did happen, I would likely stay with GoogleOS. =)

Whew.. didn't mean to ramble that long. Took longer to say than to think.

Re:Not just a browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to pee on your parade, but you do realize that this would put us right back where we were pre-this-whole-new-fandangled Free Software thing, right?

Re:Not just a browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent idea. I have not run into 1 person who has anything bad to say about Google. On the contrary, most of my conversations go like,"Wow, did you know you can do this with Google?" If the geniuses at Google can tweak a distro of Linux, I think that the general consumer would not be afraid to try it out. I still think that joe sixpack still sees Linux as an OS for sys admins and engineers. How do they make money? They can charge for the distro by selling it as a CD or download. Or, it could be a good way to keep Microsoft from doing things with Widnows/IE that would limit Google's full potential.

Re:Not just a browser

[IYagami]

Please, do this exercise:
substitute "Google" with "Microsoft".

What do you think now?

Re:Not just a browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows about coLinux right? It's the linux that run concurrently with windows.

So, here's an idea. Instead of a LiveCD, how about a ConcurrentCD? You stick in a CD of coLinux (or GoolgeLinux or ConNoppix or whatever), and, while your Windows session is still running, up pops KDE, fully functional, either in a window or full screen. Now you can try Linux with leaving Windows!

How sweet would that be? Migrate to Linux in complete safety.

Re:Not just a browser

[mattax]

An OS of some sort is always needed. What Google is doing though is making the thin-client, thick-server model viable again.

If Google keep going the way they're going, especially if they release a GBrowser "virtual machine" to fix a few issues, Sun's vision of Network Computers will have arrived.

Of course, Macromedia Central follows the same concept, and could get there as well; but it needs a lot better content first.

Google

[suso]

All good things come to an end?

Re:Google

[over_exposed]

I think what you meant to say was: "All good things come to an end."

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

Re:Google

[suso]

I mean its the begining of the end. I mean come on, I'm even using windows to post this message.

Only be a good think

[barcodez]

If this gets Firefox on more desktops, replacing IE it can only be a good thing for standards compliance, competition and the decline of the IE monoculture.

I'm still strugling to think why they would want to do this, perhaps that have some cool XUL applications in the offering.

Re:Only be a good think

[ack154]

I'm still strugling to think why they would want to do this

It's called "investors" ... or at least part of it, I bet. Besides just being "google" - they have to give investors reason to believe the company will grow and succeed.

Re:Only be a good think

[over_exposed]

I think they're doing just fine in that department... their stock went up almost 15 points today...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new GoogleFox monoculture overlords.

Re:Only be a good think

[Leroy_Brown242]

More targets = more people taking aim.

If there are millions of Firefox users, the script kiddies and exploiters of the world will just change targets to this new popular browser.

Firefox will never be as bad as IE, but I'm sure most people would be surprised how bad it can get.

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google sees Microsoft as a competitor, so leveraging XUL with Google's killer apps is one way to keep the the internet free from a possible Microsoft lock-in (XAML comes to mind).

Re:Only be a good think

[pdboddy]

Heh, that's a bit of a FUD.

If that were true, we'd be seeing daily accounts of Apache servers being hacked and used for malicious purposes. According to Netcraft, Apache is used by almost 70% of the webservers out there. Yet Microsofts IIS is on 20% of the webservers out there, and there have been way, way more malicious attacks on it. So being bigger does not necessarily mean being the bigger target.

IE gets more attacks because it is poorly coded, and you see less attacks on Firefox because it is coded better than IE. If it were to be come more popular, I don't foresee a huge jump in attacks.

Re:Only be a good think

[Omicron32]

http://www.google.com/mozilla/google.xul

They have that.

Re:Only be a good think

[mikefe]

Come on, netcraft is just skewed statistics in the favor of OSS.

You are counting the same server multiple times because hosting providers use Apache for the most part.

Anyone who has worked in your typical office, will be waging a constant fight against IIS and MSSQL because that's what most of the companies are selling to shops that aren't big enough for Oracle.

Apache has not won the war. I say that to keep anyone from giving up on that front.

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

You are counting the same server multiple times because hosting providers use Apache for the most part.

Huh? Hosting provider or not, Apache is still running more sites and in use far more then Microsoft. Hosting providers use Microsoft also, but MORE use Apache then Microsoft. That draws the same conclusion that Apache is in use more then Microsoft. A hosting providers makes a choice of a web server based on a variety of reasons, more choose Apache. Why do you think that is "unfair" or skewed about that?

Re:Only be a good think

[SnprBoB86]

How is this useful? Granted, I do not know anything about XUL, but this seems completely useless.

The Google homepage is a good enough interface...

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this is /. I'm allowed to be pedantic and I shall. The correct saying to express something that will soon come to pass is 'in the offing' not 'in the offering'.

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is "coded better than IE"? Oh, that must explain why FF has had _MORE_ security vulnerabilities than IE over the last six months.

That's right, MORE. Go check out Secunia and other sites. Some of these holes have been massive, and sitting in the Moz codebase for years now.

Your attitude is going to harm FF. Once 1.0 is out, and millions of clueless newcomers are using it thanks to NYT ads, and then another massive hole is found --- what do you think will happen?

Given the exact same userbase of IE on FF, it'd have major problems. We've already seen several large holes in FF, with no doubt more to come. Advocating it will be difficult then, and those saying "oh it's coded better" should think up some new excuses.

Re:Only be a good think

[SgtChaireBourne]

How about MS' deals with Cisco for MS only broad band and its deals with SBC for MS only HDTV over IP? The web is not the only thing that can be destroyed by proprietary protocols and formats.

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are millions of Firefox users, the script kiddies and exploiters of the world will just change targets to this new popular browser.

1. There ARE millions of Firefox users. Downloads of 1.0PR have averaged about 1 million per week.

2. While people often claim that security is approximately inversely proportional to popularity, none ever provide any evidence that the premise is even remotely valid. Why is that?

Popularity may make it a bigger target, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's designed for security, that the team developing it takes security very seriously, and that the security problems that they've had have consistently been fewer in number, less severe, and fixed more quickly than IE's problems. And IE has had several years to stabilize.

Re:Only be a good think

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, by all means check out Secunia. Here's the links for Firefox and IE.

I found this part particularly interesting:

"Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Highly critical... Currently, 16 out of 63 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."

And for Firefox:

Mozilla Firefox 0.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Less critical... Currently, 3 out of 16 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."

Also, the "criticality" break down for advisories in 2004:


IE Extremely: 13% Highly: 39% Moderately: 13% Less: 17% Not: 17%
FF Extremely: 0% Highly: 13% Moderately: 44% Less: 44% Not: 0%


For the months listed (going back to May), Firefox has had 16 advisories[1]. IE has had 14. But how many IE vulnerabilities have been outstanding during that time? The ONLY reason IE has a lower number of advisories since May is because the security holes were found earlier! No, Firefox has not had more vulnerabilities in the last six months. That's a flat-out lie. It's only had more *discovered* in that time. And all the critical ones have been fixed. And overall they've been much less severe than IE's holes.

As for them "sitting in the Moz codebase for years", where do you think the IE holes came from? That's right, they've been sitting in the IE codebase for years. Go figure. At least the Mozilla team fixes them promptly when they are found.

Hell, one of the Firefox vulnerabilities was actually a Windows vulnerability!

[1]I'm now noticing that some advisories include multiple vulnerabilities. I don't have time to examine each advisory to count actual vulnerabilities and check their severity, but I encourage anyone who has the time to do it. I'm reasonably confident that Firefox would come out on top in pretty much any reasonable comparison.

Re:Only be a good think

[TheRaven64]

Hmm. I don't have Mozilla installed at the moment, and my XUL is a bit rusty, so perhaps someone could enlighten me as to what the context is of a menu with the following items on it:

• Everything
• Mac
• Linux
• BSD
• U.S. Government

Re:Only be a good think

[mikefe]

Hosting providers use IIS only when they *have to*.

That means there are more web sites on the same apache server than web sites on IIS servers.

You end up with a higher ratio of web sites to server with apache, and lower with IIS which means IIS may be on more servers...

Also, most of the fscking web based software sold to small business is based on IIS. And that shouldn't be exposed to the internet.

Re:Only be a good think

[pdboddy]

Yes, Firefox is better coded than IE. As stated in a reply to my post, IE's vulnerabilities were just found sooner, and I'll bet that more will be found in IE than in Firefox as time goes by. Some of those advisories on Secunia about Mozilla and Firefox were actually WINDOWS holes.

And since Microsoft has a history of waiting *months* to fix critical flaws, and has flatout refused to fix others, I'll stick with Mozilla and Firefox, thanks.

Re:Only be a good think

[mikefe]

I'm posting to myself, but why was that marked funny?

Netcraft would be lynched if they showed the number of machines (really all they can do is count IPs) are running Apache compared to IIS. I'd unhappily bet that they were equal or IIS was in the lead.

And?

[thesandtiger]

I worked for a company that registered every single one of about 2000 variants we could think of for the domain name.

One of those domains was "(companyname)lovesjesus".

I wish I were kidding.

Anyway, it only makes sense for Google to do the same.

I will, however say that I would gladly give up the left nuts of all those within 100 miles of me for a version of FireFox that had what this Google Fangirl thinks would be the Alpha and Omega of browsers.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they c0de it in javascript like their 'leet mail service. Then I can just run it from IE without a download.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will, however say that I would gladly give up the left nuts of all those within 100 miles of me for a version of FireFox that had what this Google Fangirl thinks would be the Alpha and Omega of browsers.

(emphasis mine)

How hard is it to give up what isn't yours in the first place? That's like me saying I'd gladly take the virginity of teenagers within 100 miles of me for Windows to stop crashing.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at a software development tools company that registered "(companyname)baseball.com" and many hundreds of others equally stupid.

I also heard my previous company's CFO tell the web guys to buy "(companyname).cx", "(companyname).to", "(companyname).za", etc. "so the competitors don't get them".

Re:And?

[orkysoft]

You said too much...

Re:And?

[Bombcar]

Might be correct....

Re:And?

[thesandtiger]

How hard is it to give up what isn't yours in the first place? That's like me saying I'd gladly take the virginity of teenagers within 100 miles of me for Windows to stop crashing.

Well, duh - I'm a *lazy* fangirl.

Tell you what, though - if they can make it render /. appropriately and they'll buy me a nice dinner, I'll gladly give up what could only ironically be called my virginity.

Re:And?

[thesandtiger]

You said too much...

I will neither confirm nor deny that I worked for any of the companies or individuals in that list.

I will only say that this was at the birth of the .com boom, so it is possible the company is no longer listed as the doman may or may not have lapsed.

Maybe.

Re:And?

[kaschei]

Um, Taking someone's virginity would require you to perform a very specific action on their person-- I'm given to understand that people pay significants amount of money for similar services. To wit, Peter: "Where am I going to get $5000?" Quagmire: "You could whore yourself out to a thousand fat chicks for fifty bucks a piece. Or fifty really fat chicks for a thousand bucks a piece. What? Don't look at me like that. Fat chicks need love too. But they gotta pay."

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell you what, though - if they can make it render /. appropriately and they'll buy me a nice dinner, I'll gladly give up what could only ironically be called my virginity.

Done!
Well, actually it'll be a skinned version of IE and a Big Mac & fries.

Is this good enough?

Re:And?

[bhtooefr]

Well, it's CGI+JavaScript, but there is a browser (click Browser Emulator) that works under any JavaScript-supporting browser ;-)

Pick a browser, any browser. IE and the Line-mode browser are especially fun ;-)

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol you worked for the washington post

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting - washingtonpostsluts.com is available!

Re:And?

[lonesome phreak]

http://www.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+contains &host=*washingtonpost*&lookup=lookup%21&position=l imited

Found 185 sites

hmmmm...

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

nuh... satan

Re:And?

[Psychotext]

I'm off to register www.googlefox.com :)

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/result s.jhtml;jsessionid=M1TQ2FW10ABFUCWMEAQCFEQ?whoisto ken=0&_requestid=830268

Yup! Hehe and most are registered to the washington post

Re:And?

[LnxAddct]

Heh definitly washington post.
Regards,
Steve

Re:And?

[LnxAddct]

...and here.... 185 registered domains. I personally like "www.theWashingtonPostSpeaksToJesus.com".
Regards ,
Steve

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's trolling a bit there.

Re:And?

[rocjoe71]

Pathetic!

No one will visit your site...

...not once I register www.googlefire.com

Re:And?

[Psychotext]

Ah, but I can take all your traffic with my godlike www.firegooglefox.com and just in case I'll take www.foxgooglefire.com too.

Though it wouldn't be so bad if most of these weren't gone already!

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a troll.

Re:And?

[cyfer2000]

looks nobody love John Lennon

Screwy html

[arpy]

The html got messed up somewhere along the line. Here's my original submission:

An article on Mozillanews.org is reporting on Google's registration of the domain Gbrowser.com (nothing to look at there yet). The article provides a summary of rumours that Google will release a branded version of Mozilla Firefox (along with some interesting speculation).

Re:Screwy html

[johndiii]

Yah. I e-mailed them from The Mysterious Past, but they didn't fix it.

Pure speculation

[FiReaNGeL]

OK, this story is pure speculation.

But if it turns out to be real, will they be able to gain a significant market share? Against IE and the rising Mozilla-based FireFox? To me, it seems that IE get all the non-techy people love, and Firefox gets the geeks... They better implement some VERY nice features, because the Google name alone won't make me switch for sure. And I LOVE Google.

Re:Pure speculation

[avalys]

It might not make you switch, but it will make Joe Blow switch.

Most people haven't heard of Mozilla (insert rant about screwy open-source project names here), but they sure as hell have heard of (and trust) Google.

Re:Pure speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. But Joe Blow also heard of Microsoft (IE) and (scary Halloween sponsored part) trust them too.

Re:Pure speculation

[gonzo (son of colin)]

Most people just have IE because they have no major angsts with it, or because they dont realise theres alternatives.

Re:Pure speculation

[taylortbb]

Unfourtunatly you are too corect. I know many people that think IE is the web. I once had a conversation with someone:

Me: This computer doesn't does have the internet.

Them: Yes it does (Moves cursor over IE icon on desktop). See! Stupid!

Me: (Laughs)

or..

Them: Hi, you're good with computers, my internet wont start, where can I buy another copy?

The list just goes on.

I haven't completely given up, I've got about 50 people to use Firefox + its been made the only option on the 35 PCs at my school (we're a Mac OS 9 school).

Re:Pure speculation

[JFitzsimmons]

Would that be legal? Mozilla and such is GPL isn't it?

Re:Pure speculation

[ArbitraryConstant]

"But if it turns out to be real, will they be able to gain a significant market share?"

Almost certainly yes. Mozilla derived browsers have a pretty good share with people that actually know what it is. When most others hear about another browser, they think "Oh, that's just a third party browser that probably doesn't work properly.".

On the other hand, the Google name carries vast weight. Google has a reputation for going everywhere and working with everything. A better reputation than Microsoft.

Re:Pure speculation

[Wordsmith]

Do you know something I don't? I don't believe there was ever a version of Firefox for OS9. If there was, I'd love to use it - I'm stuck using an "unofficial" mozilla 1.3 on OS9 at work. The latest official mozilla for 9 was 1.2ish.

Come on...

[MastaBaba]

... Google? That's a search engine!

for in case it gets slashdotted:

[RealAlaskan]

For in case the article gets slashdotted, here is the full text:

Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in /web/virtuals/mozillanews.org/db_config.inc.php3 on line 2
Database is not availiable

Re:for in case it gets slashdotted:

[caluml]

Why hasn't the pconnect saved it? Persistent connections, no?

Re:for in case it gets slashdotted:

[oldmildog]

Haha! Man I wish comments could be modded higher than 5.

Re:for in case it gets slashdotted:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, since nobody's ever done this joke before...

They are definitely up to something

[XST1]

WHOIS on GBrowser.com

Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-1278108)
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View
CA
94043
US

Domain Name: gbrowser.com

Administrative Contact:
DNS Admin
(NIC-1467103)
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View
CA
94043
US
dns-admin@google.com
+1.6503300100
Fax- +1.6506188571

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS Admin
(NIC-1467103)
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View
CA
94043
US
dns-admin@google.com
+1.6503300100
Fax- +1.6506188571

Created on..............: 2004-Apr-26.
Expires on..............: 2006-Apr-26.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Apr-26 16:46:39.

Re:They are definitely up to something

[big daddy kane]

thank you for restateing the bleedingly obvious. yes we already knew that it was registered to google. that was established a long time ago. thanyou for discovering whois. go wallow in your stupidity somewhere else.

Re:They are definitely up to something

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice Flamebait.

Re:They are definitely up to something

[XST1]

Hey thanks for contributing buddy!

But I think you forgot to hit the "Post Anonymously" button.

already slashdotted... FULL TEXT

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's Browser Plans
October 19th, 2004 - jesus_x
For several months, there's been a lot of buzz around Google's April 2004 registration of the gbrowser.com domain. After quite a while of digging, I believe I've managed to boil some truth out of the rumor stew. While this is pure speculation, it's speculation based on a wide variety of facts gathered over the past three months. Feel free to take it with a generous helping of salt.

The Mozilla developers have been stone silent on the issue, aside from a few accidental slips, but several other sources have let loose other bits of information. Interestingly, there's either great confusion on the plans (or a highly partitioned project inside Google), or a good deal of misinformation. Trying to determine what's real and what's not is like making a Venn diagram. Each source is a circle filled with information. Some information is common to all or many circles, some information only comes from one source. you have to put all the circles together, and where they overlap is the most reliable information. So 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.

Also, Google loves the recently aquired Blogger, and will have built in linkage to Blogger and rich-editing tools, making Blogger a highly integrated feature, with the ability to blog links and web-content as easily as using their integrated GMail features.

As I stated, Mozilla.org and Mozilla developers have been very quiet on all of this. But with such an open organization, it's hard to hide all secrets. There have been a lot of hidden bugs in Bugzilla related to searching, bugs that even members of the Security group can't access. Recently, there was a bug duplicated to a confidential bug with the following comment by the triager: "This is a duplicate of a private bug about working with Google. So closing this one." That bug also now closed, but it was open long enouch for people to notice it.

There's also a lot of 'covert' code going into the tree without individual bug references. And none of these patches are being checked in by Google staff, but by other Mozilla developers, ostensibly checking in code for Google employees to keep a low profile. None of this is Google-exclusive, per se, as much as it is code that one could easily see as making life easier for a third party developer making heavy integration changes. the checking comments are usually very technically described, possibly to obfuscate their use to the majority of watchers to maintain the secret. Example

Exactly how all this is being tied together is not clear, alth

Why not simple

[leperkuhn]

They really just might release firefox with a google theme. Since there already is a google search bar, it's not that complex of an idea.

Need Google games! [nt]

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Not a good thing

[onion2k]

Introducing secrecy into the coding group is a bad thing whatever the project, but working on something on the scale of Firefox without knowing where the project is headed? Thats a receipe for disaster.. One of the good things about Firefox has been the transparency with which the developers have worked so far. Its easy to know whats going on.

Whats more, there are one or two of us out here that don't want a myriad of features specifically oriented to one corporation. I'd be more than happy with Google producing a line of Google plugins and extensions, but coding them into the browser itself? That sort of thing leads to code forks... and thats not a good thing for the Firefox project on the whole.

Re:Not a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it be their own browser? or will gbrowser just be firefox packaged with all of google's extensions/themes/etc? As long as firefox provides all of the libraries, google would hardly have to have anything to do with firefox's development.

Re:Not a good thing

[Myen]

Betweent the renaming and (temporary) removal of view source, we (the random bystanders) already are not sure where it's going. On the bright side, sometimes I feel like they don't know either ;)

Here's hoping that things won't be that integrated - one of the goals of Firefox seems to be keeping cruft out anyway.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7bf16ffe-25f1-11d9-81d9-0 0000e2511c8.html/

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7bf16ffe-25f1-11d9-81d9-0 0000e2511c8.html

In Soviet Russia

[deathcloset]

Google Browses you!

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, Nikolaj, you're right:

access_log: crawl-66-249-64-181.googlebot.com - [25/Oct/2004:02:52:11 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 3637

I feel so... used

Re:In Soviet Russia

[confusedneutrino]

My desktop is Soviet Russia, then...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[roman_mir]

I am sure it is happenning (your email at least) in the Soviet (with all the internal passports, DMCAs etc.) United States too.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

> Google Browses you!

OR,

In Soviet Russia...browser googles you.

Good news

[mekanizer]

Good news, Explorer was becoming Holexploiter, after being Exploiter and Exploder. Microsoft uses it as another scare tactic to force people to upgrade.

Well...

[pokeyburro]

FWIW, googlelovesjesus.com is available.

At least for the next few seconds.

Re:Well...

[gosand]

FWIW, googlelovesjesus.com is available.

So is jesuslovesgoogle.com. WWJG? (What Would Jesus Google?)

Re:Well...

[stonecypher]

What Would Jesus Google?

Probably Dr. Koop's site, about deep cuts and infection.

Oh shut up, I'm already going there for other reasons anyway.

Already close to die with mysql warnings

[daniel23]

so before it finally goes down to its knees, here is the text:

Google's Browser Plans
October 19th, 2004 - jesus_x
For several months, there's been a lot of buzz around Google's April 2004 registration of the gbrowser.com domain. After quite a while of digging, I believe I've managed to boil some truth out of the rumor stew. While this is pure speculation, it's speculation based on a wide variety of facts gathered over the past three months. Feel free to take it with a generous helping of salt.

The Mozilla developers have been stone silent on the issue, aside from a few accidental slips, but several other sources have let loose other bits of information. Interestingly, there's either great confusion on the plans (or a highly partitioned project inside Google), or a good deal of misinformation. Trying to determine what's real and what's not is like making a Venn diagram. Each source is a circle filled with information. Some information is common to all or many circles, some information only comes from one source. you have to put all the circles together, and where they overlap is the most reliable information. So 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.

Also, Google loves the recently aquired Blogger, and will have built in linkage to Blogger and rich-editing tools, making Blogger a highly integrated feature, with the ability to blog links and web-content as easily as using their integrated GMail features.

As I stated, Mozilla.org and Mozilla developers have been very quiet on all of this. But with such an open organization, it's hard to hide all secrets. There have been a lot of hidden bugs in Bugzilla related to searching, bugs that even members of the Security group can't access. Recently, there was a bug duplicated to a confidential bug with the following comment by the triager: "This is a duplicate of a private bug about working with Google. So closing this one." That bug also now closed, but it was open long enouch for people to notice it.

There's also a lot of 'covert' code going into the tree without individual bug references. And none of these patches are being checked in by Google staff, but by other Mozilla developers, ostensibly checking in code for Google employees to keep a low profile. None of this is Google-exclusive, per se, as much as it is code that one could easily see as making life easier for a third party developer making heavy integration changes. the checking comments are usually very technically described, possibly to obfuscate their use to the majority of watchers to maintain the secret. Example

Re:Everyone say it with me....

[Anonymous Coward]

funny... very funny.

We've got money now!

[cubicledrone]

So let's branch off into 800 money-losing "businesses" and flush a pile of cash the size of Nebraska down a shithole so someone can stand up in a meeting and look brilliant by saying "I think we should return to our core business."

Then we can start the layoffs.

Re:We've got money now!

[avalys]

Your comment might be correct, if not for the fact that very few (if any) of Google's ventures have been money-losing.

Re:We've got money now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Google Sets, Google Compute, Google Deskbar that ask and expert thing have all be real money spinners. You Google fanboys need to get a grip.

Re:We've got money now!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they should work smarter while broadening their scope.

Re:We've got money now!

[avalys]

Please. I'd hardly call those "ventures", more like experiments that they make available for the public to play with.

Those things cost them so little to develop, a single one of them taking off would generate enough revenue to pay for their entire experimentation program.

Re:We've got money now!

[Sir0x0]

Which is exactly what image search and froogle have done, and what gmail could very well do.

Re:We've got money now!

[debrain]

According to Edgar (SEC filings), I seem to recall that 96% of google's money comes now from AdSense. It was mostly just licensing their search software in the beginning, but AdSense has really taken off. They are certainly diversifying, and I suspect revenue will soon come from different places. Their brand name is second-to-none in the online universe.

Re:We've got money now!

[mikeage]

So let's branch off into 800 money-losing "businesses" and flush a pile of cash the size of Nebraska down a shithole so someone can stand up in a meeting and look brilliant by saying "I think we should return to our core business."

Was I the only one who read this as "a pile of cash the size of Netscape"?

Next thing you know...

[ICECommander]

Google will bundle an OS with their search engine

Re:Next thing you know...

[floki]

Google will bundle an OS with their search engine

Emacs?

Re:Next thing you know...

[neurojab]

>Google will bundle an OS with their search engine

Actually they do. If you "buy" the search engine, you're probably getting a Google Search Appliance, which comes with the OS, hardware, and search engine.

http://www.google.com/services/

GOO/Firefox on GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a new partnership between RMS and Google.

"GOO/Firefox on GNU/Linux"

And if it runs on gnome, everything'll be prefixed "GGG"

Google still dosent have a single non-windows app.

[dwipal]

Google-Toolbar, Google-Desktop, Picassa, etc. etc. etc...but everything windoze. I would simply love the google-desktop for linux or mac.. may be, so firefox might be *sortof* an answer.

google desktop runs a webserver on the localhost which the browser connects to, so u can always use google desktop of ur windows machine from the linux machine and do stuff like that.

sigh

[DeathByDuke]

another name for firefox now. what is it this time? GoogFox?, Foxle?, how about IEDIE?

Re:sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

How about GBrowser?

Here's an idea..

[barcodez]

The Mozilla Foundation should register mozsearch.com then start buying up shares in Google but denying they have an interest in search... it would serve absolutely not purpose but it would create a hell of a lot of hype and speculation.

Re:Here's an idea..

[mikefe]

No, msearch or firesearch would be better.

Just try saying mozsearch three times fast...

With all these google services popping up...

[gonzo (son of colin)]

I wont be able to use my buzz phrase anymore! Me: Dont worry Ill just Google it. Them: You cant email flowers.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

GoogleOS?

[fodi]

So, Google will build their technology into a browser.. and add mail, news and searching capabilities. then they'll couple that with the desktop search facility, maybe with an auto-translation of emails service... how about right-click on a word (product) in an email and search for its price... Hehe.. might as well add Solitaire and call it an operating system...

Integration's great, but at which point will it just become a bloated, lock-in business model??

Re:GoogleOS?

[pdboddy]

Hopefully they'll make it modular enough, that you add/remove what you want/don't want. Hopefully they'd go with one of the *nix OS's.

Ooh, here's a scary thought, SCO vs. Google.

Expressly denied by Google CEO

[adamwright]

See http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3d077db6-25ff-11d9-81d9-0 0000e2511c8.html

Specifically

One widely rumoured defence against Microsoft has been a Google web browser potentially countering the software giant's ability to embed its own search engine into its operating system.
"We are not building a browser," Mr Schmidt said.

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "not building," he didn't say "not branding."

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[FooAtWFU]

Well, yeah, Mozilla is building a browser and rendering engine and all that... Google is just (supposedly) building brower extensions. :)

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[gtpilot]

Please! Let this die!!

This rumor has been making its way around blogs for quite some time now. The only proof (and circumstantial at that) is the phantom mozilla bugs, and gbrowser.com.

Please mod the parent up. I don't have the link, but one of the founders also expressly denied this story

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[DaoudaW]

"We are not building a browser," Mr Schmidt said.

Well that about cinches it, doesn't it? Now the only question is when they release it.

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[pdboddy]

Ah, but he didn't say, "Mozilla is doing it for us..." or "We may buy Mozilla to have them build us a browzer...".

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[adpowers]

I agree. I think a browser is below what Google has in mind. I talked to a guy from Google the other day and he said that in five years, the company will be doing stuff you never imagined from Google. I think Google has a lot of tricks up their sleeve, but a browser isn't one of them.

Re:Expressly denied by Google CEO

[gad_zuki!]

Exactly. Schmidt isn't going to piss on his "do no evil" philosophy by lying. Hell, saying "no comment" would have produced 1,000 articles on the gbrowser and tons of free publicity. It other words, there is no google browser.

That means:

If you give a shit about standards then get off your ass and promote the browser yourself. Dont expect the Google to do it for you. I've got dozens of converts. Its not that hard. Well, now with SP2 out it will only get harder. Time to reframe this issue:

The gbrowser isnt some IE killer. In fact, SP2 is the Firefox killer. Now is the time to get Firefox out. 1.0 should have been released before SP2.

Or we can continue to deny reality and hope google or some other benefactor fixes the standards mess we're in like the fundies who are waiting for the rapture to pull them out of their clothes any minute now.

Linky Linky!

[killermookie]

So does by linking the entire article description mean that most Slashdotters are having poor eyesite problems? It's getting harder and harder to see where the little mouse cursor is located so screw it, just link the whole damn thing and click-click-click away til you get it.

Re:Linky Linky!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a GoogleBomb stupid, their aiming to rank highly for every word in the english language.

Re:Linky Linky!

[killermookie]

Okay, so they fixed it. I guess we do have decent eyesite.

Public Gmail

[Anonymous Coward]

If, as the article suggests, the browser features tight integration with Gmail, then a release of a browser would only happen as or after Gmail is made public.

Gbrowser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone assume that Gbrowser would be a web browser? It could really be any number of things; an online photo album, an online store, anything that you can "browse".

Re:Gbrowser?

[gonzo (son of colin)]

Because it gives us more to talk about =)
Good point though

Mmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Virgin teenagers! I gotta get me some some of that!

How about Googlebird

[Anonymous Coward]

instead of Googlefox.

mysql_pconnect

[mfh]

And that's the problem with mysql_pconnect, IMHO... I recommend using mysql_connect because if you get slashdotted, at least the connections are not persistent (meaning you get more of them). I was slashdotted a while ago and my code held up using mysql_connect();

Re:mysql_pconnect

[adam mcmaster]

Indeed, I work for a hosting company and we tell our customers not to use mysql_pconnect at all.

Re:mysql_pconnect

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah pconnect sucks

Re:mysql_pconnect

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised it held up so well; I've found that switching to pool-based connections dramatically decreased page load time. Which is why they exist. But you have to keep in mind a couple things while using them:

• The size of your pool should be smaller than the database server's maximum connection by at least the greatest number of connections you might make from outside the webserver. Otherwise, after it gets to a certain point, it'll die like this.
• You need to properly release the connections back into the pool or it will become exhausted and no pages will load.

*sigh*

[cybersavior]

Here we go again! I cant wait for the next "google rumor of the week." "Google has been said to have tested their own Google-brand cold fusion ractor, codenamed GFuse. However, this comes with little fan-fare as next month they are expected to unveil their anti-matter warp core and time travel device."

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

not before the Google-Storage Protocol Oriented Technology.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

"However, this comes with little fan-fare as next month they are expected to unveil their anti-matter warp core and time travel device."

I'll donate money to Google for that endeavour. Perhaps they could time travel back to before the many burnings of the Library of Alexandria and then scan every single scroll that was part of the collection and wrap that into Google...

Web-based browser

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally think gbrowser will be a web-based web browser. Imagine, use any browser to go to gbrowser.com and conveniently browse the web from the comfort of your web browser.

Of course, google will be happy to keep track of your browsing history for you and will only share it with their closest friend$.

But what if Google *buys* Mozilla?

[pdboddy]

If it's possible?

Re:But what if Google *buys* Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but they could become a major contributor to the Mozilla Foundation, and let their employees work write code for Firefox on work time (either for the Mozilla project or their own supposed extensions). Though being a major contributor doesn't necessarily mean they could actually have a say in future directions of the projects, though...

Animated favicon

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, MozillaNews has an animated favicon. Who decided that was a good idea?

[OT] Re:And?

[justMichael]

I will, however say that I would gladly give up the left nuts of all those within 100 miles of me for a version of FireFox that had what this Google Fangirl thinks would be the Alpha and Omega of browsers.

After reading your blog, I find that statement to be extremely funny.

Re:[OT] Re:And?

[thesandtiger]

After reading your blog, I find that statement to be extremely funny.

Well, I'd have offered mine, but I've already given it away.

A valid question

[Gentlewhisper]

Will Gbrowser be GPL?

Re:A valid question

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Firefox is MPL, not GPL.

I'd expect a Netscape-style license if Google makes their browser.

Re:A valid question

[mikefe]

No, it will be MPL/GPL/LGPL.

Some speculation:

[mfivis]

A lot of critics didn't expect the Gmail thing to fly, claiming they were going the way of Yahoo and other portals -- but Google surprised us with revolutionary features and a completely slick but quick interface.

A lot of people thought advertising on the Internet was dead, but AdSense revived it.

A lot of mainstream media thought tracking our usage was an invasion of our privacy -- but Google has only strengthened its capabilities and products using our data in a productive manner.

When we speculate on Google's pending product releases, we seem to always forget to take into account that there will be something totally new attached to it --- making the product near-revolutionary.

Re:Some speculation:

[pdboddy]

Ah, I think what's got people up in arms is: "Why didn't I think of that first?". For every person who's saying, "Cool!", one's saying, "It sucks!".

"Nothing to look at", oh yeah?

[itistoday]

(nothing to look at there yet).

You think anyone here cares about that??? It'll be /.'ed anyways... ppffft!

Eric Schmidt says NO!

[jamesl]

Google rules out becoming a net portal.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3d077db6-25ff-11d9-81d9-0 0000e2511c8.html/

Nothing worse than ruining the speculation wars with facts.

Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[TrentL]

...and that's that you can't open "links" in new tabs. In fact, most of what passes for "links" in GMail aren't links at all; they're just areas that listen for JavaScript mouse events.

Why can't I open my different messages in new tabs? Why can't I view a message, and then open my "inbox" in a separate tab?

As it stands now, I have to manually open a new window and then navigate to GMail. I can't believe Gmail has the same problem hotmail does.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Short Circuit]

Erm...I just middle-click on links in messages. Works fine.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[TrentL]

To open them in new tabs? It certainly doesn't work fine for me. View the Frame source on your inbox. It's just a bucket load of JavaScript. It's not working in Firefox 0.8.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[mattdm]

Yes, to open in new tabs. Works fine for me too. Firefox 0.8 is pretty old -- I'm using 0.10 (preview release). Perhaps it's something that was changed in there somewhere.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[ChoGGi]

he doesnt mean links in messages, he means the actual messages

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Short Circuit]

It's worked for me since 0.9; You might need to upgrade. IIRC, there are a couple significant security flaws that weren't patched in 0.8. 0.9.x is up to 0.9.3, and I'm running 0.10.1

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[IAmTheDave]

It's a Gmail thing. Hold down SHIFT while clicking the mail message - opens in a new window.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[inflex]

Probably they're not fully referencing form vars or such. ie, rather than doing document.someform.foo.value=Z, they're just doing foo.value=Z. This sort of thing failed to work with Firefox between 0.8 and 0.9.x, it now works again in 1.0RC1.

Totally stumped me too, until I saw what was going on in the javascript debugger. Not sure if they did it as some sort of 'security' feature. All I know is that I had to rewrite a lot of javascript code to make things work again for FF (until, as said, the latest version came out).

PLD.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[TrentL]

I just upgraded. It's still not working. I'm at 1.0 Preview Release on Windows XP. If I'm reading a message, and I middle-click the "Inbox", it shows the scroll-control. Middle-clicking on links in other websites works fine.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Syberghost]

Gmail has a HUGE usability error, and that's that some old beta versions of a program they didn't write don't work properly?

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[TrentL]

Gmail has a HUGE usability error, and that's that some old beta versions of a program they didn't write don't work properly?

No, the problem is that, for some reason, they're using JavaScript for links instead of perfectly good anchor tags.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[damiam]

That "some reason" is because they don't want to load a whole new page for each link. It's part of what makes gmail so fast.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[qbwiz]

I just middle-clicked on the "Reply To This" button to reply to you in a new tab. On Windows XP. It works.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Mikeybo]

There's an alternative that you may consider. It is the

• New windows button

on the right side inside each messages you have, usually just above the sponsored links.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Dumbass.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're having that much trouble maybe it's time to think of switching to IE. What a dumbass. BTW, I'm using Firefox 0.9.2 and it works great.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Myen]

Doesn't seem to work for me (both for Labels and Messages). The detach thing (this icon) does work though - and with a very recent nightly, you get to open that in a tab too.

(Options -> Advanced -> Force links that open new windows to open... in a new tab)

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Erik Hollensbe]

If you really like tabs, there's a FF extension which maps the window open facility to creating a new tab. It's pretty damn nice, especially if you're fond of clicking links in emails.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[aliebrah]

If you really like tabs, there's a FF extension which maps the window open facility to creating a new tab. It's pretty damn nice, especially if you're fond of clicking links in emails.

Why use an extension when Firefox itself has this functionality built-in? Look under Tools | Options | Advanced | Tabbed Browsing.

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[rsborg]

You talkin about this?

Tabbrowser Extensions...

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Bander]

there's a FF extension which maps the window open facility to creating a new tab

Actually, that's now built into the browser. Has been for a couple of weeks, and I expect it will be part of the 1.0 release. Grab the latest build, and see Preferences, Advanced, Tabbed Browsing.

Bander

Re:Gmail has a HUGE usability error...

[Erik Hollensbe]

Ah, cool! I don't want to run a nightly, but it's good that it's integrated.

strange

[minus_273]

wonder why they arent using KHTML. The combined efforts of KDE, Apple and google. That would be quite a product.

Doesn't that lend weight?

[SuperKendall]

Indeed, by using Mozilla code Google is not building a browser at all. If he'd said "distributing" I might think different.

A google branded browser would do really well, and could do wonders to further teh adoption of XUL if it helped use Google, GMail, and other Google apps.

Will Google steal Mozilla's thunder?

[Thai-Pan]

At first I thought to myself "What's the point?" but upon reading the article, I saw a few valid ideas for such a product.

My main concern about this lies in whether or not Google's rebranded Firefox will essentially steal the Firefox project away from Mozilla. Ultimately, Google has far more popular support as a whole than Mozilla, and is well known by an audience consisting not of just computer geeks, but my IE-wielding doofus customers. I think even if the Google browser were 100% identical to Firefox, it would in the end be more successful simply because of the brand recognition.

When we look at the "browser wars" right now, our two distinct groups are IE and Firefox (and Opera, etc etc..), but division among the ranks of open source soldiers is the worst thing that could happen to us. If Google's rendition of Firefox becomes more successful than Firefox, they will in the end seize some level of control over the whole Mozilla project. If they were to do so, well.. They'd be a bunch of jerks.

IMO the best way Google could go about such a project would be to implement their new additions to the Firefox browser via XUL, with minimal changes to the core browser itself. If they leave the Firefox browser as the property of the Mozila project, they don't step on any toes, and XUL is still flexible enough that they can make all the toys they'd like. Furthermore, even if they distribute their own Google Browser Package which is essentially Firefox with the Google XUL Extensions, it would still capture their market while remaining "friends" of the open source community. I don't think I'd install a Google browser myself, but I'd consider a couple of Google extensions on Firefox.

This again ties back to a previous article about the role of XUL. Cross platform workplaces are becoming more and more common these days, and an XUL oriented work platform could certainly alleviate a lot of the stress. Imagine plugging in your PDA/Cell phone, and bing, it synchronizes with a Firefox extension, the same as you use at home, at work, etc. Or even if you used XUL extensions for instant messaging, saving synchronizing files between home and work (Gmail file system extension anybody?), basic office work.. Ultimately if Firefox wants to take a major stab at IE's market, they're going to need some clever tricks to get people to rely on it, and if you ask me, getting people to rely on the XUL platform is it.

Re:Will Google steal Mozilla's thunder?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kills non-IE browsers in the eyes of Joe Sixpack is that they don't render things 100% like IE. Since many sites use tricks that are broken by the standard, but happen to work on IE, they consider the non-IE browsers to be useless.

Thing is, Firefox, the mozilla browser and the "GBrowser" all use the same render engine. SO if the GBrowser got 95% market share, Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers would all display sites 100% like GBrowser. So there is no lock-in on ability to surf the web. They might (and probably would) add a load of extra features, such as integration with all of Googles other services, that might be a compelling reason to use the GBrowser. But if you wanted to use a less powerful broswer you could.

Re:Will Google steal Mozilla's thunder?

[teslatug]

Wasn't mozilla browser supposed to be just proof of concept, and a tool to help them get the kinks out of the internals? I thought the mozilla devs encouraged others to build real browsers based on their code at some point.

Re:Will Google steal Mozilla's thunder?

[Myen]

I think that's what Netscape (6.x / 7.x) was - mostly because Mozilla didn't want to deal with support at the time, I believe. Later Seamonkey was eventually marketed as an end-user product, I believe, along with Firefox (around when they were spun off and Netscape went away, IIRC).

Re:Will Google steal Mozilla's thunder?

[Lord Crc]

What kills non-IE browsers in the eyes of Joe Sixpack is that they don't render things 100% like IE.

Dude, not even IE renders 100% like IE! And I'm not talking IE 3.x vs IE 6.0.

I just found out that my page looks like a trainwreck on IE 6.0.2900 (xp sp2). Since I'm still using 6.0.2800 (xp sp1), I didn't know anything was up, since it looks perfect on it (even looks identical to FireFox)!

So, what was the problem again?

(for what it matters, its 100% valid 4.01 strict + css)

Re:Will Google steal Mozilla's thunder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the point of open-source to be open-source? Competition stems innovation, thus we should openly embrace the idea of Google "stealing the thunder" of Firefox. Can you imagine if the Market went 90/10 "Google Browser"/IE ?... that would be one hell of a tribute to the mozilla/firefox team.

Right now, Firefox has NO competition as far as a software product is concerned. Firefox bends IE over and shows it who is boss. But shit... you say "Firefox" to anyone, and they draw a blank. You say IE, and of course everyone knows the name. Firefox HAS competition as far as name recognition goes. It doesn't have the marketing that IE does. Shit. IE has the best marketing in the world. It comes with your computer! And its name is Internet Explorer...
Joe Blow is like... hmmm. I wan't to explore the internet. Internet EXPLORER must do that. It's the same with google. You want to do a google search? Just "google" it up. Google has a name, and a damn good one at that. Many people HATE the internet right now. They don't realize that, their internet is a reflection of their browser. They just think the internet is litered with junk. Those people who use google, love it... so if google can make/take a browser that has the same "love" that googling the internet does. By all means Google, please market Firefox for us.

Or...

[Sebby]

"All google things com to an end"

Slashdot is amazing.

[BReflection]

On the exact same day that WebmasterWorld runs an article with a quote debunking this, Slashdot lets out the trolls and conpsiracy theorists:

One widely rumoured defence against Microsoft has been a Google web browser potentially countering the software giant's ability to embed its own search engine into its operating system.

'We are not building a browser,' Mr Schmidt said."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3d077db6-25ff-11d9-81d9 -00000e2511c8.html

Why are Google/Moz being so quiet on this?

[Arivia]

--DISCLAIMER: The following is only conjecture and opinion--
Because Google is asking something momentous of the Mozilla Organization.
Something that might cause Mozilla to lose all of the good karma and favor they have built up with the Open Source community.
What would this be?
A license shift, or something akin to it.
Think of this:
1)It's patently obvious that Google wants to work with Mozilla(or at least it is to me.)
2)However, the Mozilla applications are trilicensed(GPL/LGPL/MPL).
3)And under those licences, Google would have to release any changes they make to the Mozilla codebase to their own licence.
4)Google, in the past, has demonstrated a notable lack of willingness to open up their own applications and non-search engine APIs to developers.
So what can we conclude from this? Google wants to build off Firefox, in an environment where they do not have to recontribute their changes back to the shared codebase. From that, we can gather that possibly Google has extended an offer to Mozilla:
We'll give you whackloads of money-enough to keep you afloat for years-if you either change to a BSD-type licence or give us a snapshot of the Mozilla codetree that we can use for closed-source application building.
This would be very tempting to Mozilla-they wouldn't need to worry about money so much, and could concentrate on browser building. However, it would definitely lose them brownie points amongst the Open Source community-and can they afford that? And if they turn Google down, will Google favor MS and Opera over them? Drop compatibility between Firefox and GMail?
Think about this-it makes an awful lot of sense.

Re:Why are Google/Moz being so quiet on this?

[Maul]

Why is this modded as a troll?

It is just speculation as to something that may (or may not) be happening between Google and Mozilla.

Just because the speculation makes Google seem like a bad guy doesn't mean it is trolling.

Re:Why are Google/Moz being so quiet on this?

[TiggsPanther]

Y'know even if it's not something as sinister as that it could still well be that licensing issues are what are keeping them tight-lipped at the moment.

Even if they don't want Mozilla to actually shift licenses it's still quite possible that Google're wanting to make sure they can get the best deal - heck, as they're a commercial entity I'd be surprised if they weren't. And if they were in talks with Mozilla they might well be thrashing out licensing terms to see how they can get the best deal whilst not infringing the GPL/LGPL/MPL trilogy.
If it is something like this then they may well not want to say anything unless they aren't able to work things out.

New browser paradigm?

[serutan]

Wow, that's a feature-packed and very useful sounding app! Web browsing, searching, e-mail and newsgroups tightly integrated in one UI. If I were a Google manager (assuming all this is true) I would make a point of calling this a true Internet Browser as opposed to mere web browsers, and promote it as the next step in the evolution of the net.

Re:New browser paradigm?

[DarthWiggle]

IANAOU* but doesn't Opera have tightly integrated mail and newsgroup features in a single UI? I fiddled with it once and it actually drove me a little batty that mail could be just any other tab... of course, I could be wrong -- my total Opera usage is about 4.4 minutes.

*I Am Not An Opera User

Re:New browser paradigm?

[Myen]

You forgot chat (IRC), word processor / HTML editor, and possibly calendar ;) Oh, and call it Suite.

(Please tell me you meant this to be funny... All the mods are Interesting though.)

The beginning of the end?

[nonregistered]

"There have been a lot of hidden bugs in Bugzilla related to searching, bugs that even members of the Security group can't access."

That can't be good. What's the timetable for security to see these changes? I'm not going beyond 1.0PR until they do.

Distributed webcrawling?

[Capt_Troy]

It would be interesting if the (rumored) GBrowser generated metadata that is used in google searches, thereby distributing (at least part of) the webcrawling mechanism.

one reason firefox did so well ...

[Anonymous Coward]

was because it was a standalone browser ...

Next step: the world

[serutan]

Google has impressed me from the start with their ability to make the right moves. If they were to create their own Linux distro and go from there, I bet they could own the world in 5 years. Longhorn, schlonghorn.

Re:Next step: the world

[scottking]

heh... "schlonghorn"... heh heh... you said "schlong".

An interesting sidenote...

[thanasakis]

Yesterday I was reading an interview from Joel Spolsky (You probably know him from Joel on software) and I found the following quote interesting:

In my ("How Microsoft Lost the API War") essay, I quoted a Microsoft guy (and Longhorn Avalon team member) named Joe Beda. I quoted him saying "Microsoft is making a big bet on the rich client." And now he works at Google with Adam Bosworth. I'm sure what they're doing is a new browser. It's the IE (Internet Explorer) team reconstructed inside Google.

Re:An interesting sidenote...

[romanm]

From previous experience with Google publicly available software (Google Bar and Google Desktop) I'd say that it's more likely that Google will choose Internet Explorer as a base for its browser instead of Mozilla. But I'd be very happy to be wrong!

Not necessarily a web browser

[Nurgled]

The web isn't the only thing you can browse.

Firefox

[CompSurfer]

Obligatory Firefox evangelism statement. Get Firefox!

I wonder though, why would anyone want to switch to a google branded version of Firefox? There is already a toolbar for firefox that searches google.

aieeee!

[Shadow of Eternity]

QUICK! CALL AN OLD PRIEST AND A YOUNG PRIEST! -this is just because the damned lameness filter doesnt realise that YES! I KNOW IM YELLING! im SHOUTING at the TOP OF MY LUNGS!-

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

this is good news

[solosaint]

this is good news, it should make FireFox even more popular, google rules!

They don't have to _build_ a browser

[melted]

They can take Mozilla/Firefox as-is. So in this statement Mr Schmidt neither confirmed nor denied anything.

... satan?

[Heisenbug]

You worked for Satan at the birth of the .com boom too?

Re:Everyone say it with me....

[Anonymous Coward]

funny... very funny..

networks and futureworks

[zogger]

--I agree with you. In the long run, looking way upstream, I don't even want to run "an OS". I just want to pick what apps I want, they come *complete*, as in, everything you need. Open an app, it spawns it's own kernel and FS, and etc., and goes and does it's thing, either locally or out on the network. Nothing will need to be cross platform because there won't be any platform except for what the app carries with itself.

Re:networks and futureworks

[micromoog]

Sounds like DOS, but without the ability to share data between programs. Yuck.

For the mother !@#$ing billionth time

[Elwood P Dowd]

Google already has an IM client. It's called Hello, and they got it when they bought Picasa.

Screwy names?

[zogger]

When google came out I seem to remember quite a few metamorphical online eyebrows raised with their screwy name. All it takes is a little time to go from weird and screwy to accepted, and even part of the language, i.e., "googling".

Personally, I like mozilla over "firefox" for a name, to me, firefox sounds like some new car with a wing on the back of it and neon fender lights.

but ya, in retrospect a bit more I know what you mean, but here's a question-a challenge really-quick, name a browser! Something non weird, easy to remember, catchy, and indicates it is in fact a browser (or search engine, your choice).

the letters G, I, K and X are already spoken for and have been beaten into wimpering submission already....

In that regard, both navigator and explorer were quite good.

Re:Screwy names?

[jsebrech]

but ya, in retrospect a bit more I know what you mean, but here's a question-a challenge really-quick, name a browser! Something non weird, easy to remember, catchy, and indicates it is in fact a browser (or search engine, your choice).

webskimmer
netfiend
jani (just another net interface, pronounced janey)
inkwire (a poor pun, but say it out loud)

webskimmer seems to not be a good choice though, since there's already a technology company using the name for one of their products. I guess it's too obvious.

It's supposed to sound like either something that will help you look around the net/web, or something friendly.

With firefox they went a different direction though. They specifically looked for a name that portrayed eagerness, a desire to take on the vested powers. The name has almost nothing to do with the function of the software, but more with the role they intend for it.

Re:Screwy names?

[zogger]

It's hard isn't it? Product branding and naming is a pretty specialised field, sounds easy to contemplate, then it gets pretty hard when you have to put your serious folding money on it and go forward. I'll try one of each...

search engine = bloodhound (relentless, tracks down things no matter how well hidden or how far away, etc)

browser = Eagle (soars above the terrain almost effortlessly, sees everything quickly at a glance, swoops down to it's target without fail)

Re:Screwy names?

[jsebrech]

Ah, but the catch is you need something that is trademarkable, meaning no one can have a product with the same name in your field, or a field related to your field. That's why phoenix had to become firebird (phoenix the biosmaker intends to build browsers into their bioses), and firebird had to become firefox (pressure from the firebird database community, plus non-trademarkability).

Re:Screwy names?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that the name wasn't originally "Firefox", right? It was originally Pheonix up into about 0.2 (if my memory serves me) and then after some trademark issues was Firebird until 0.8 or so.

It would make perfect sense and it would kill IE

[theolein]

I can believe this, and I can perfectly understand Google wanting to hide the fact that their employees are working on this. For one a Google Mozilla based Browser with GMail, GoogleGroups, Blogger, GoogleIM, Google search for the web and your desktop all integrated would rush up the marketshare of Mozilla in huge numbers because Google is known far beyond the tech world. It would be a direct competitor to MSN, and a much better one at that.

It would make IE unused and unwanted by the masses and it would run on any and every platform that Google runs on.

The fact that Google has to time this right should be obvious: If it becomes public knowledge too soon, Microsoft will do it's usual embrace and extend routine to make IE the most modern, full featured browser out there.

But I think Google is absolutely right to do this. Microsoft has already acknowledged Google as a competitor, especially in search services with MSN, and to Microsoft nothing is holy in chasing and killing a competitor. This means that it would not be beneath MS to do it's utmost in both FUD and technical underhandedness to stop Google working on PCs with Windows.

Google's best chance is to attack by moving forward with a platform that integrates many popular web features in order to get the public to move over to Mozilla. Once and if their marketshare is high enough it will prove very very difficult for MS to unseat them, especially if they don't have the majority borwser anymore. This is not 1995 and Microsoft couldn't threaten PC manufacturers with withholding Windows OEM.

Only one problem...

[SoCalChris]

Most of Google's features aren't compatible with Firefox.

Even their latest offering, the desktop search says they might include FireFox support in the future, but only if enough people request it.

I would think that if they are in fact going to release a rebranded FireFox, they would be making sure that most of their services work with it.

It sounds like a bunch of wishful thinking to me.

Next thing you know...AOL_OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? Some have suggested that AOL bundle a Linux OS with the Firefox browser.

Or is everyone's memory short around here?

just launch the os

[luckyleprecon666666]

just launch the os, mail, instant messanger and complete google desktop and get it over with... ENOUGH WITH THE ANTICIPATION....

Not just a browser-Offsite evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That login screen brings you to your desktop with all of your settings (stored on Google's server) with access to your gmail, browser, blog, files stored on the GmailFS, Google IM, Google Office Suite, etc..."

Remember the last Slashdot meeting? We vetoed the idea of our data being offsite. So no.

Moogle

[SubKamran]

So I guess they will call it "Moogle"? :D Or maybe, "GoogleFox" or "Gox" or "GoFox" or something. I hope not "GBrowser", that's too long.

Re:Moogle

[echocharlie]

Don't know if they have this copyrighted, but Square Enix has a character called a Moogle in it's Final Fantasy Series of games. It's this cute little White Teddy Bear with Bat wings that says "kupo!".

Hmm... somehow the description I just gave doesn't give it justice.

Re:Moogle

[suman28]

...and what happened to Foogle? That would be most approriate choice seeing how they already have Froogle

New Firefox homepage!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/mozilla/google.xul

Thanks! This is now my new homepage in Firefox!

Google News?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65106,00. html

"Cached"

[swatthatfly]

What scares me most is the "cached" option. Good luck erasing the "I hate google" remark. It stays there forever! It stayyys....

how about related novelty items:

[jdkane]

... a google-branded key chain that beeps when you clap so you can _search_ for your keys and get fast results. Appropriate.

I for one...

[pebs]

would love to see a Google-branded Firefox. That would mean more people using Firefox and less IE users.

Alternative rationale ...

[quarkscat]

Mozilla.org has decided to "cyberswat" on
this domain name in the hopes of striking
gold. Considering what Google.com is worth
these days, I'm sorry I didn't think of it
first.

Actually, it would be a quite good move for
Google.com to adopt an alternative F/OSS
browser to beat the 800 pound gorilla over
the head. Yea! Death to MSIE!

let the games begin...

[recharged95]

Business-wise, are we heading down the same path? Is google about to repeat history (i.e. Microsoft OS + IE vs. Netscape). What happens when another search company integrates Opera? What did we learn about the Microsoft OS+IE vs. Netscape issue?

Poll: What would you call Google's Linux?

[students]

Ginux - Glinux - LinuG - LiGux - G-Linux - Gnix - Ginix - Goonix - Lingle - Lingoo -G*nix - Gnugle/Linux and Gurd and GOS and GFOSS and Mangoo and Gonectiva and Goose and Yellow God GOT Goontoo and
Glackware and Glookware and Slackgoo and Slackgle and
Gasp and
Grosa and
Gine and
Grudgeware and
G007! and
Gycoris and
Gaydar and
Galt and
Grid and
Gark and
Ginspire and
Goper and
Gorphix and
Guppy and
Fedora Gore and
Gimpi and
Golinux and
The list goes on and on..

Dashes/ands/bad formating for benefit of lameness filter.
Gnopix is already taken!

Re:Poll: What would you call Google's Linux?

[students]

This is too long to make a real poll. If it was reduced to just a few choices, there would be "insensitive coward" chaos.

If it's a dedicated server with one DB

[Chuck Chunder]

Then pconnect is certainly the way to go as it significantly cuts down the overhead of each page because you don't need to establish a connection to the database on every page call.

All you need to do is limit the number of clients Apache will serve to the same number (or a little fewer) of db connections the DB is limited to, thus getting the maximum usage the db configuration will allow and a slightly nicer error response.

If you have multiple databases on the DB server then persistant connects are probably not the way to go though, because a lot of them may be laying idle and wasted at any one point.

Correction: Insensitive Clod

[students]

Whoops. Slow down cowboy! Read the post before you click submit. Insert more junk for lameness filter's pleasure.

Use in a sidebar

[commonchaos]

> http://www.google.com/mozilla/google.xul

Visit that website, bookmark the link, go to "Bookmarks->Manage Bookmarks", right-click on the Google XUL interface, check the box that says "open link in sidebar".

Re:Use in a sidebar

[north.coaster]

Does this work in Mozilla, or only in Firefox? I can't find the "open link in sidebar" check box in Mozilla 1.7.3 (XP SP1). Thanks. /Don

Re:Use in a sidebar

[scupper]

hey thanks for that tip on adding the google.xul to the sidebar.

Re:Would their own browser improve search results?

[Lehk228]

Google Desktop search didn't seem to take privacy that seriously...

nice Troll, too bad it's pretty well known now that the "Google desktop search is spyware" FUD has already been debunked

Non-Web Browsers...

[evilviper]

Look, this "gbrowser" rumor-mill is getting beyond completely ridiculous.

Definition:

Browse
2 a : to skim through a book reading passages that catch the eye b : to look over or through an aggregate of things casually especially in search of something of interest

Gee, you mean gbrowser.com could have something to do with BOOKS, or SEARCHING (two things Google is already involved it) and not necessarily WWW browsers (which is a complete departure from anything else they've done)? I think so!

Now stop with the moronic rumors that have NO BASIS IN FACT WHAT-SO-EVER.

Re:Non-Web Browsers...

[luckyguesser]

stop with the moronic rumors that have NO BASIS IN FACT WHAT-SO-EVER.

Your suggestions of a book-search program, etc. are no more based in fact than the suggestion of a web browser. In fact, the suggestion that Google is doing nothing with the domain name is not based in any fact either. It's simply unknown.
Having said that, I actually think it's a quite fair assumption that, if Google is doing anything related to the domain name, it could very well be a web browser, since they are a search engine company, and the term "browser" has become associated with applications that ..well, "browse" the web.
Some rumors start for good reasons.

Re:Non-Web Browsers...

[evilviper]

Your suggestions of a book-search program, etc. are no more based in fact than the suggestion of a web browser.

Exactly... Yet, the idiots ALWAYS claim google is going to be offering a web browser, and NEVER suggest anything else.

it could very well be a web browser

And it could just as likely NOT be a web browser.

This is a moronic rumor.

Next... AOL Branded Firefox

[JPyObjC Dude]

It's due to come out eventually. I just wonder when.

Cool Idea of having Google on the Moz side of the fence. Just means more of my Moz coding will be usefull for many years to come.

[moz==bliss]

I think we're getting really hyped op over this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be happy with Gmail being XUL-based, but other's seem to want more.

._.

Better name...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they should name it Godzilla...would sure strike deep fear in Microsoft's heart!!

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[burns210]

Wow there cowboy.

First, Google-groups, gmail, and google IM(something i AM in support of, but doesn't exist) are nothing that need to or should be tied to a single browser. That is silly.

Second, IE wouldn't just disappear, and the majority of people wouldn't really care if GBrowse was released, they are not aware of what a 'browser' is.

To get even 20% of the market, which in itself, is an unbelievably huge and almost unattainable task, Google has to blow the socks off of IE and generric firefox. Not just add cool button to search Google quickly, or a gmail pop-up for new mail, I am talking jumping a full generation in browser development such that people will be waranted in going out of their way(which 80-90 % of people could care less about doing, they are happy with hotmail and IE 6, seriously. Ignorance is bliss) to discover this new program.

Now, maybe if Orkut(google's social-net cliet) got a major face-lift, and some compelling work went into it such that it became as big a demand as Gmail. Google would have something.

But don't think that just because Google releases a Firefox-based browser that the world will change, that is just wishful.

Ohhh

[mattdm]

I get what's going on. I'm clicking on hypertexted URL links in messages. You're clicking on gmail UI element "links". And you're absolutely right -- that sure doesn't work. But this isn't particular to gmail -- it's very common with many highly-scripted websites. The issue isn't just that the links aren't "real links", but that they actually refer to (and depend on) the state of things on the current page. Creating a new window and then changing the state of that window -- while leaving the original unaltered -- could cause weird results.

Re:Ohhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for wasting our time. Try to read through a message next time you are so cocksure.

Re:Ohhh

[Anonymous Coward]

That was nastier than I intended. Sorry. I will go see a therapist now.

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only isn't it 1995, Google has an even more powerful weapon to fire back at Microsoft.

Imagine that Microsoft does get heavy handed, and starts using it's dirty tactics (I know it's weird, just bear with me!). Suddenly, bink! Google locks out anyone using Internet Explorer to search.

Faced with a choice between Google or IE, which would win? Interesting question.

Looks like Google also have reserved 46645.com

[Anonymous Coward]

... Google have registered GBrowser.com

It looks like Google have also reserved 46645.com.
Add 1 to this URL to go to a competitor's site. ;)

Limitation of damage

[karnat10]

It's the IE (Internet Explorer) team reconstructed inside Google.

An excellent opportunity to take them all out with one cruise missile, so they can't do any more damage. Maybe that's why Google hired them, just to lock them away.

If I had to develop a browser, I wouldn't hire the people who have made the worst product on the market. That's like if George Bush Senior had hired Gorbachev as his economic advisor in 1990.

But Google knows a lot we all don't, that's for sure. Isn't it, Larry?

Are we being bitter yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeebus, is someone reacting badly to having his job application rejected!

Google ignores Mozilla

[LQ]

Look at the fancy add-ons that Google does for IE and then ask where are these for Mozilla?. Then tell me that Google have got a big alternate browser strategy.

Re:Google ignores Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Please. Google search bar is a popup blocker and a quicksearch. Mozilla already has a popup blocker and a quicksearch. There's no demand.

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[OwlWhacker]

Isn't it in everybody's (except for Microsoft's) best interest to support an alternative browser to IE?

While the world is using IE, Microsoft has control of the Web, and control of innovation - either holding it back or forcing its own proprietary features upon us as 'standards'.

If any company achieves some success in the Internet market, Microsoft is more than likely to find some way of siphoning that success and putting the company out of business. Usually this is not via a competitive route, but is achieved by lock-in/out, bundling, etc.

If you want to maintain your success, you need to take control away from Microsoft, so that you can compete fairly. This is logical.

Once you have a large percentage of users running Mozilla based browsers, wouldn't it be detrimental for Microsoft to ostracize itself via proprietary/platform-dependent methods?

OT

[Anonymous Coward]

finishing your sig: ...those who run out of room for their signatures? ;)

Re:Google still dosent have a single non-windows a

[moeffju]

Seeing that Google Desktop search only binds to 127.1 (localhost), you'd probably have a hard time accessing it from your Linux box.

Gmail and tab/multiple windows

[RedLaggedTeut]

I think GMail is designed to use only one window because it automatically refreshes even while you are busy composing a new email.

There must be some tricky javascript updating of the entire web page going on.

Not a very good answer, I know, but I guess you'd only get better answers from gmails programmers..

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[Anonymous Coward]

> To get even 20% of the market, which in itself, is an unbelievably huge and almost unattainable task, Google has to blow the socks off of IE and generric firefox.

Let see. A web browser with all standard non-evil extensions + a xul interface to google search (you can search, sort, slice and dice results trhough a good UI) + a xul interface to image search (build gallery of images, find related images, etc, etc) + a xul interace of google groups (basically, like a full blown newsreader, but will *all* the newsgroups avalaible) + a xul UI to froogle to shop online + a xul UI on orkut + a gmail email address with 1Gb of mail, and a full blown xul UI.

This is only with their current product line, we could add IM to that too, and, of course, local search (ie: a content-based file manager)

You just go to google, you reigster your name as gmail, and get gbrowser ?

And this on every plaform ?

They'll get 20% of the market. In a breeze.

Then, if they do no evil, they'll become *the* internet. And get a 80% marketshare.

Looks a lot like AOL, but it could probably work.

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[idamaybrown]

I would then just use a different search engine. What is the big deal?

There could be another way to look at this...

[HerculesMO]

The comment made "we're not going to build a browser" does not mean they won't release Firefox with Google extensions pre-installed. They won't be building a browser and that's 100% truthful to what Schmidt said, however they could be releasing Firefox extensions which only reinforces on the article posted yesterday on /. about how developers can use the plugin engine of Firefox to develop rich web applications.

Personally I'd love to see some good Google extensions for Firefox. I would NOT like them to build a browser, or even take Firefox and rebrand it. Let Firefox remain in the realm of open source and in Mozilla's guiding hands, and Google can simply contribute to the open source movement AND capture market share at the same time.

Do no evil indeed.

History Repeats Itself...

[http101]

Didn't Netscape do the same thing with AOL sometime in the past several years? I remember Netscape being much better than MSIE til after the sell-out. At that point, I switched to MSIE because it didn't come with AOL's crap plastered all over it. Am I going to have to do the same with FireFox?

I told you first

[Pirulo]

just to document it in a blog,
I can foresee Google OS
just few steps away

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[tbannist]

I think it would be more effective to remove Microsoft sites from the index or penalize them heavily. So that when you search for Microsoft, you see the anti-Microsoft pages first. If you just lock them out of the search engine many will either not switch or become angry with Google.

However, they could put a note on google that only displays to IE users that tells them their browser is broken and browsing the internet could damage their computer unless they replace it with a browser that works. That would be amusing, especially combined with a sudden drop in Microsoft PageRank rating.

I suspect this is one of the reasons Microsoft is trying to create their own super search engine. They don't like someone else having that kind of power over, especially when they use Linux.

Re:It would make perfect sense and it would kill I

[burns210]

In that light, assuming they did sorta-independent but integrated(can use the seperately if you want, but they work together nicely) programs for each, I could see something happening along those lines.

The Orkut is questionable, only because Google has not put much work into it, they created it as a side for-fun project, and it has remained as such.

If it was tri(mac win lin, with freebsd/etc a nice bonus)-platform, I could see this taking off quickly.

Opera would make more since the Firefox

[d3bruts1d]

IMO it'd make more since for Google to purchase Opera Software or at least team with them and use the Opera browser. - Google hasn't been shy about purchasing other companies (eg Picasa, Blogger, etc.)

Why? Well, first off Opera has the ability for non-registered members to make use of Google's text-based ads. This would allow Google to continue making a profit even from a "free browser", then there is of course the option to remove the banner if you purchase a license. Again, bringing in money for google.

The next reason I think it'd make since is because of M2, Opera's email client.

For those who have never used Opera or M2 you might be surprised to find out that GMail and M2 share a lot of the same concepts (almost identical).

• No folders
• Labels
• Filters
• Email Search
• Limited contact information ;)

Using both M2 and GMail, it looks like the two would be a perfect match for each other.

your sig

[cbr2702]

I'm a concientious .sig objector.

What's wrong with conscientious sigs?

Re:your sig

[gartogg]

It'd funny because I didn't realize that I still had a .sig: I don't view them anymore...