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Firefox Lead Now Working For Google
zmarties writes "In a very
low key announcement on his blog, Ben Goodger, lead developer for
Firefox, has announce that effective from a couple of weeks ago, he has become a Google employee. In practice his day to day job won't change that much, in that he will still lead Firefox through its forthcoming releases, but with Google paying his wages, we can be sure that new and interesting overlap between the Mozilla Foundation's browsers and Google's services are sure to develop."
About all the press coverage Blake Ross has been getting for Firefox... ABC, Wired, the Playgirl spread, etc.
... that Firefox was due for another name change.
(yes, I know it's just the lead - laugh.)
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
really does pay off!
I'm not sure how to think about this. To be fair, I use both quite extensively, and I love the Google search toolbar in Firefox, but I can't help wonder about any conflicts of interest that may arise...
I trust both companies...but have learned that in computer technology, trust can only be trusted so far...
Look what happened to Transmeta after they "sponsored" Linus.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Wow, Google is everywhere nowadays. I really hope they won't go all "evil corporation" on us.
With the string of announcements of smart moves over the last few days why is the share price not soaring?
UK Laptops
Well congrats to Ben. All the best at Google. But I do wonder how Firefox could be MORE integrated with Goggle?
I mean.. you start it up.. you have google at the top right, and if you use the default home page, you will link to the google search engine. There are google toolbar plugins available. What else can there be?
Should be interesting to see what they come up with...
Friends don't let Friends use Internet Explorer.
I'm sure this story will generate a slew of positive responses about Google supporting the Open Source Community, and how Linux is one of the technologies they rely upon. there will be some concern, but not much.
What I'm wondering, is how would the Slashdot community respond if it were Microsoft doing the hiring, and THEY were promising Ben's day to day tasks wouldn't change much.
How would people react?
What would be the theories of WHY Microsoft would be supporting a Firefox developer?
Let's set aside the arguments about why this is an implausible scenario and the obvious Microsoft bashing and ask, aside from the exceptions above, what would be the reaction to such an announcement?
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
...Firefox has google search built-in. Someone needed a job!
Yes, there are numerous articles and such in the past that have mentioned that most Google engineers get 10% of free time to devote to their own projects.
Orkut was born this way, as well as Google Sets and likely numerous other projects.
Google toolbar like... https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/morei nfo.php?application=firefox&version=0.9&os=Windows &category=Search%20Tools&numpg=10&id=33
So the more FireFox users there are, the more Google users there are. I don't see anything mysterious about this move by Google. It's really in their financial interest, and not just because of the PR.
Ben Goodger, lead developer for Firefox, ...
Good-bad-gers? Fire-bad-foxes? I bet Google hired him just so they can use this as a puzzle on their Ph.D. job applicants!
So from what I gather, google is collecting every scrap of information about everything. This spans from the basic google websearch to google desktop search and eventually google e-mail searching (searching for anonymous content from within their growing gmail database).
When google takes over our web browsers, they will also be able to collect info on more than just what we are searching for -- they will know how we are finding desired content.
Pretty soon google will know everything about everyone. People won't have to bother with the trouble of defining ourselves in the real world anymore -- inspection and introspection of humans can be done through tomorrow's google. I presume it will be utopia.
I am wearing a tinfoil hat right now. What they are doing is perfectly legal. But I still think it is a bit scary.
Firefox has always (since 0.1) had a Google Toolbar extension--not that find you need it as its built-in search functionality is so good.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I don't mean to slam Google, but just to go ahead and state the obvious:
What a great way to influence a project: pay for it.
Google will really be able to get any pet idea that they have at least brought up as a part of the project.
This is a very cheap way of touching millions of people. A smart, patient and friendly company should be able to find ways to get their agenda helped, even when their employee is generally remaining "independant".
And free advertising: BGoodger@google.com at the bottom of every communication? Though I suppose it'll be something more like BGoodger@gmail.com
This should be happening much more than it does.
Can someone sell me whatever this guy is smoking? No google toolbar?
It has a search portion, that is fully customizable to other searchs, plus the capability to create your own custom keywords to use in the toolbar instead. (like the built in dict "word" for definition, you can use any keywords for search items, if you choose not to use the search toolbar)
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
Actually, it's 20% of their time.
I'm somewhat shocked that someone would say this. I have to admit, I can't help but wonder if I'm being trolled on this. But I'll apply Occam's Razor and assume ignorance over malicious intent.
Firefox has Googlebar and has had it for some time. Now, some have claimed Googlebar doesn't count since it lacks PageRank. Enter PRGooglebar.
So this means the Google will get the features it wants and to hell with everyone else, including standards compliance which seems to be taken a back seat these days.
I've never done so before, but this comment prompted me to run the basic main Google page through the w3c validator; the results were suprising. It's such a simple page; why not take the (minimal!) time necessary to code proper HTML?! Yikes. I didn't expect that level of sloppiness.
(Yes, my personal page validates just fine, thanks (though some subpages may not, given the age of a lot of the code, and the multiple generations of sites the content pages have churned through... After I graduate and pass the Bar, maybe I'll have time to go back and fix them...)
geek. lawyer.
I think you have an overly pessimistic view of human nature. I only do what I desire to do, but does my desire make it selfish? If I desire to help the poor, is that selfish? If it is, then calling something "selfish" is empty.
Even allowing that Google may have a monetary incentive to hire a chief Mozilla developer, I don't see what the problem is. At this point, Google needs an alternative browser to keep Microsoft in check. Supporters of Free Software also desire that IE marketshare should drop, and that more open alternatives (such as FireFox) should take the slack. The interests of a "selfish" corporation and Free Software hippies are aligned.
There's no guarantee that Google won't turn "evil" in the future. But let's judge them on things they have done, rather than what they might do.
Please note that I am not totally pro-Google. I have issues with their acquiescence to censorship of totalitarian regimes. But this action doesn't bother me, and I don't see why it should.
If this isn't a conflict of interest I don't know what is..
I REALLY hope they stick to the "Do no Evil", because with this sort of move, they have the oppertunity to be either very very _good_ or just as easily be very very _evil_.
Then again.. its Open Sourced... so if google try anything even slightly askew, the code will be forked or better yet just plain rejected.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I guess Dave Hyatt never did pay the $50 to Ben. So he had to leave for Google.
Mozilla Bug #52094 "Hyatt should give ben $50"Two Roommates and a Boyfriend, updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Will Google now become the default search engine on FireFox? So, if you enter a faulty URL, then suddenly, the Google web page appears and presents you with alternative Web links?
Uh, Google already is the default search engine.
I prefer that the development team at FireFox be agnostic. Perhaps, now is the time to switch to Gecko. I hear that it is faster and has a tighter interface with Windows.
Firefox uses Gecko.
Lots of companies pay people to work on Mozilla, including IBM. It doesn't mean they do things only to benefit their employers.
Well, according to google:
google "evil corporation": 2,010 hits
google "good corporation": 207 hits
They have the odds against! They're doing even worse than M$:
microsoft evil corporation: 840 hits
microsoft good corporation: 297 hits
He did pay, and it's now marked as resolved.
Ben Goodger, lead developer for Firefox, has announce that effective from a couple of weeks ago, he has become a Google employee.
no offense to the poster, but: s/has announce/has announced/
Grammar is what sets us apart from the script kiddie.
+5, Truth
Well let's hope that Microsoft will first sponsor someone to work on internet explorer...
Why are you scared? This is free software. If Google tries to subvert the aim of FireFox, users can just fork it and take the development in a different direction. Open software is held together by the community behind it. If you try to act counter to that community, the community, and thus the software, will leave you behind. The worst that happens is that a developer is lost to the interests of a particular corporation and no longer works on the main branch of FireFox. But that seems unlikely to me, as Google knows trying to subvert FireFox to be GoogleFox or whatever would be counterproductive. All they really want, I imagine, is an alternative to IE so that users can choose Google without it being integrated like MSN Search is in IE.
No, because it is not run by Ben Goodger but a non-profit organisation (Mozilla Foundation) for the public good and if they go bad you can fork it (except for the few proprietary bits of Firefox which don't really add to the functionality).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Sure lots of us associate Firefox with Ben, but just because he's got a job at Google, doesn't mean they hired him so they could 'take over' the browser, or that there's going to be 'overlap.' Many of Mozilla's/Firefox's developers work at other large IT companies (IBM is the first to come to mind) with none of this influence, or speculation of influence.
Presumably, Ben's work on Firefox will be happening in his personal time, and won't have much to do with Google. I would guess they hired him because he's now got a great track record and clearly developed skills in UI design and implementation.
You are very right to ask "What does Google get out of this relationship?" The answer, in this case, is much more simple and benign. It is a benefit to Google to have a healthy competitor for IE. Especially since MSN's search utility is their primary competitor. MS could just as easily make some IE only enhancements to MSN (i.e., ActiveX controls for context-based searching or something). This is more difficult for Google to do since they remain forced to support IE. They can't add features to Firefox and lock out IE since the vast majority of their market base still uses IE. If and when that changes, a closer look at the Google/Firefox relationship will be warranted. As of right now it's just a way for google to try to maintain a level playing field with MS.
Google are the new MS, forming links with good technology and talent, then manipulating it for their own selfish needs.
Trust me Google are the new evil.
Really? Which proprietary formats are they attempting to lock people in to at the expense of open and freely-exchangable standards? Which competitors are they attempting to destroy through anti-competitive contract chicanery which keeps them from getting a toe-hold in the market? What long winded EULAs are they using to deny fundamental consumer rights like resale to the consumers who purchase their products? What DRM platforms are the pushing with the ill-concealed intention of locking all competitors out of the x86 hardware platform? What annoying validation systems are they integrating that limit the purchaser to a certain number of hardware upgrades before they get locked out of their own software?
I'm waiting.
Firefox's lead developer is now a paid employee of Google. Mostly what they want is a better Firefox that can compete with Explorer, and make the web as a whole more standards compliant. This will decrease people's reliance on Windows, and make the web more of a platform. Google is, so far, the best developer on the web platform.
And honestly, if the project starts to suck, either Goodger will leave Google and find another sponsor, or the project will fork, and Google's version won't be the one known as Firefox. That would be bad for Google, and render the whole exercise pointless.
It may be a "conflict of interest," but that doesn't mean it will be bad. Google is an arrogant corporation (not in a bad way), and they think that with a level playing field, they will kick the a** of MS and everybody else. They want Firefox to level the playing field so they can win. The worst possible outcome would be for Firefox to become Google-optimized at the expense of how it works on thee rest of the web; that will hurt Firefox & Google.
Don't worry who's paying the bills; worry about the code he generates, and be happy that he's being paid to work on Firefox, which simply ensures that he'll continue to work on it.
The scary part is how brainwashed people are to what google is actually doing. Look at the posts in this one article! Google has managed to get so much brain-trust that they can pretty much do anything and the google-droids wil march in line.
/you/ like FF tons and don't care, but would it be right to force that on anyone that want's to use the two singly or as seperate entities? The fact the two could very well become inappropriately tied to each other should be cause of worry, at least cause for keeping a watchful eye.
The question is, what does google want with Firefox at all? What is it about having to have the head developer on the payroll that they could not get by writing a wrapper for gecko and mshtml?
How can this be good for firefox as opposed to just god for google? There is plenty of room for fear. Wait until you are forced to install firefox just to use google services whether you want to or not... Maybe
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Ben Goodger is "just" the lead developer, not to take anything from his contributions to the Firefox project, but the project will go on even when he work for another employer or "turn evil" as some seems to think.
The open source model is not a dictatorship, especially on a large project like mozilla/firefox, not one single person has complete control over everything.
The news of Mr Goodger change of employer is no more shocking than programmers from different countries/companies contribute code to various open source projects. There is no "hidden agenda" or "conflict of interest".
Anyone that has concern about this, become a developer: http://www.mozilla.org/developer/
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
I'm of two minds about this announcement. Ben has put a large amount of hard work to ensure the success of Firefox, given a great deal to the project. He should be free to parlay that work into any opportunity he wants, and certainly deserves recognition for all he's given to the open source community. Having said all that, I can't help but be a little concerned about the continuing Google acquisition/release binge that has been going on for some time. I'm a little paranoid at best, and can't help but feel there may be some privacy issues arise in the future as Google will be tied into everything associated with the web. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, but maybe I better stock up on tinfoil hats. Best of luck to Ben, and best of luck (we may need it) to those of us that are dedicated Firefox users (privacy being one of the major reasons for adopting itin the first place).
Yeah, but just think of how hard it will be to find a name that's not taken already! ;)
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
This is an example of an interesting trend.
Companies are starting to hire people who make a name for themselves while working on open source projects. This makes sense on several levels.
The developer has proven themselves in an environment where capability is obvious, transparent, and peer reviewed. Try getting that out of a resume. They are hiring a known.
The company gets to use that person's *fame*/name as a marketing tool.
The developer is probably more willing to put in the extra hours because they must enjoy coding to spend so much spare time doing it.
This helps the open source movement a well. If new developers get out and try to earn a name, they'll probably start putting more effort if they think their code might get them a good job. They might take the peer review more seriously.
as well, I'll keep dreaming...
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Done
You know that they may someday become the new evil corporation, but right now they're doing something microsoft never really did. They've actually been innovative, provided an awesome service, and set the standard for how a search engine should work. To top it off their news service beats almost every other news website, and their answers site is damned creative.
People LIKE them. They associate google with good thoughts because it's they provide a service that works well, and doesn't force them to use it. Google, amazon, and ebay may some day have most of the control over the internet, but it's a hell of a lot better than MSN or Yahoo being the ones setting the standards. If they ever turn into a crappy company which fails to offer anything unique, somebody else will hopefully step up to challenge them and start stealing their market share. Personally, I don't give a damn as long as I'm getting the services I need at no price to me. (Though I'd be willing to pay $1/month to turn off advertising on searches)
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Probably because they dont like relying on microsoft, who are quite likely (imho) to create an MSN search bar for IE (if they haven't already), similar to the google search bar in opera and firefox.
If they ensure one full time programmer on firefox, thats a good thing for firefox, which is a good thing for google.
Its kind of like why all those big companies are interested in linux - lessens their reliance on microsoft, its one of those rare "everybody wins" situation (no i dont count the pyramid schemes as an "everybody wins" situation)
Google is known for trying to attract the best people, not the best products. I suspect they were hiring the brain, not the browser.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This is only good news.
Firefox is already too intertwined with Google.
To remove Google as the default search engine in the search bar you have to manually delete the files, whereas adding engines is integrated.
And to remove Google as the engine that is used when you use the "Search Web for" context menu option you have change some config file that is not easy to find. I've searched through the Firefox directories(install and profiles) for occurences of "google," and there are many occurences, but I could not find something that looked like it would be it. I can not find information on how to do this from the "Mozilla KnowledgeBase," although I don't deny that it may exist. The help files are of course totally useless.
Why this assumption that no one would use anything but Google for searching? I my opinion Alltheweb is a far superior search engine.
I'm not suggesting this has anything to do with Google pushing for these features. Saying merely what I said.
The amazing fact that, in future releases, all links to Altavista, Yahoo search, Lycos, Excite, etc, will amazingly redirect to Google...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Google uses the HTML they way they do to save everybyte, notice in their source 1 char var names, its designed to be small and simple to save bandwidth, save 10 bytes from 100,000,000 million hits thats 10,000,000 bytes, ~9-10 gb?
also it always looks right no matter what your useing so its all good.
Not to be naive, but... Just because the guy is working for Google doesn't necessarily mean that Google is now in charge of Firefox. There are plenty of examples of software projects that are not company owned, but in which companies support development, since said companies benefit from both a good product and the karma that comes with supporting good software, especially that they don't own. Furthermore, I doubt too many of us are paid to cruise slashdot, or write the programs we write -- we should wish him the best of luck, and congratulate him on finding somebody to pay him for what he's already doing well!
if that happens Bush can declare a war on Google (sponsored by MS of-course,) since (as I am sure, you are all aware of,) napalm is a weapon of mass destruction.... well, it can be.
You can't handle the truth.
Why can't a guy get a job in the tech sector even though he's working on an oss project and everyone not get on the companies back for hiring him?
Because there is more to it than the naked eye can see, you would be naive if you see this move from Google as just another hire. Think.
I shot the sheriff
Open source, free, community projects and gigantic, multinational corporations do not mix.
IBM, anyone? There is a good way and a bad way to mix open source and a big corporation. IBM does it right, Apple does it right. I don't know what you're so worried about.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I find it kind of funny that people worry so much about Google invading peoples privacy, but don't worry about things like trusted computing being silently pushed towards us, which is already happening...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Because the UI to google is a web browser, so it might be slightly useful to them to have anither person on staff who knows browsers really well.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
- Google's already somewhat integrated into Firefox (search bar, Firefox Start). As long as that stays the same, it's in their best interest to keep Firefox going.
- Google runs all of its services over the Web. They don't want Microsoft to run the Web, because then Microsoft will destroy them. Hence, it's in their best interest to keep Firefox going.
- They really are planning a browser based on Firefox, and they want the Firefox lead around to make sure they don't fuck it up.
- They're going to rename Firefox to Gbrowser, add twenty links to Google properties, and sell your grandmother into slavery.
Personally, my money's on 1 and 2, and maybe 3.Hey, you try to find an open nick these days!
A CSS file can be used in Firefox to block Google's ads. Complete instructions are here at the bottom of the page. Google approves if you do this. After all, their toolbar blocks pop-ups. And Firefox has great cookie control. If you don't want to block Google's cookie because you use Gmail or other services that require it, you can turn that 2038 cookie into a session cookie. That way Google gives you a new unique ID with every session, instead of one ID that lasts until 2038.
google may want to establish browser based applications eventually. The gmail, google suggest and blogspot are examples of browser based applications.
Some people may want to say, "Ah... the javascript is so slow!" But if we can run perl on a headless server and handle thousands or even millions of request per day, why can't we run javascript applications on client side efficiently?
But what the advantage? The advantage is easy management and share of data. Instead of store files on different computers, data could be stored on several servers, protected and backuped by professional operators. Users use the data tranparently via the Internet.
Google will run thousands of servers, and sell the computing and storage power on the server side. Also, google will use their search engine to search different "functions" provided by different "application providers", just as they are search "information" provided by different "content providers" now.
As format of document files and vector graphs, xml with the help of CSS and javascript of course.
But there is a problem here. The support of this sort of "high technology" on the browser used by most people is lamed. So to facilitate the adoption of high level technology, google will bring the browser war on again.
After this war, the rich function web application may become easier for web developers, but learning curves will become harder.
If the days of browser based computing come eventually, desktop is not big business anymore, server will become the center again.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
While I don't fully agree with this A.C. poster, I do concur that this isn't really good news. I mean, I love Google and all that -- it's just that I have been counting on the Mozilla/Firefox "brands" to stay above being tied to one specific technology company.
Is this going to mean that Firefox becomes even more Googlefied? Who knows. Personally, even though Firefox comes with Google configured as its default search engine, I like the fact that the choice isn't being crammed down my throat.
I was hoping Slashdot would snatch him up so we could get that sidebar-stretches-across-the-page bug nailed to the wall.
Hey, you try to find an open nick these days!
Type about:config in the url to bring up the config then in the filter field type search. That will list the relevant config settings I think. I had trouble finding any good explaination for all the settings in the config. I wish they had made an little info button or alt hover text text for each setting.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
I see a possible conflict of interest, here. I think he needs to maintain a rigorous separation between any interests that google may profess and what is good for firefox to maintain it as essentially, an open source project.
Google is for profit, firefox isn't, even though both offer use of their product for free.
I think the legal term might be a "chinese wall" to separate work on one from work on another.
Hyatt has been working for Apple since before there was a Firefox, before there was a Firebird, and nearly before there was a Phoenix.
He was hired in July, 2002, right around the time the very first test builds of Phoenix were making the rounds. He was, as I recall, one of the main people behind a project called "mozilla/browser" (or m/b for short), which was kind of a spiritual predecessor to what is now Firefox.
And if you want to see what he's contributed since, take a look around http://tinderbox.mozilla.org. (I'm not linking to all of his chekins out of respect for the server)
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
Evil comes in many forms. I can see some arguing that Google is poising itself to eventually blur the line between corporate services and personal information. GMail rocks; 1 GB is above and beyond what anyone else is offering. Why, though, is Google stressing to never delete anything? Becuase they've got the extra disk space? Why did Google acquire Blogger? Because they wanted to build us a better interface? If we are, in fact, living in the information age, then information is power. And when one entity controls the power, even if it's not Microsoft, it's never a good thing.
Maybe this mean we'll *finally* get an "official" Mozilla/Firefox Googlebar, complete with Pagerank measurer? It's not like the unofficial one is lacking in features (other than Pagerank), but it's always annoyed me that all Google is willing to support with the official bar is IE.
Someone else also mentioned Google Desktop Search, which will search through your IE cache in its scan of your hard drive but ignores Firefox's. Google has a bit of catching up to do to support Firefox as well as it does IE with extra features....
Peace, or Not?
Put down the Dreamweaver and step the hell away from the webdav server.
Do you really believe that, or are you just acting stupid to get a laugh on Slashdot? No, it's not "all good" to write crap code that just manages to parse in most browsers. That's the exact reason why pages don't render uniformly today: IE and Mozilla had to make so many allowances for broken HTML that the rendering of a given piece of non-compliant code is a crapshoot.
That's also why people who complain that Slashdot doesn't "look right" in Mozilla get shouted down. Slashcode's HTML doesn't validate so there's no deterministic answer to what "looks right" means. We're basically in the current situation because so many webmasters put up half-assed code that IE and Mozilla had to accept whatever was thrown at them.
Fortunately, XHTML is very cut-and-dried: either a page is valid, or it's not a page. I look forward to they day when "good enough" isn't, and things really will look like they're supposed to on non-IE browsers.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?