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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)."
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
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
I wont be able to use my buzz phrase anymore! Me: Dont worry Ill just Google it. Them: You cant email flowers.
-- From the considerably cluttered desk of sir Philip Wilson.
Google rules out becoming a net portal.
0 0000e2511c8.html/
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3d077db6-25ff-11d9-81d9-
Nothing worse than ruining the speculation wars with facts.
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:
/not/ being a dumbass are the same thing.
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
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