Google Hires a FireFox/Mozilla Developer

[Brett_Tabke]

[weblogs.mozillazine.org...]

As of January 10, 2005, my source of income changed from The Mozilla Foundation to Google, Inc. of Mountain View, California. My role with Firefox and the Mozilla project will remain largely unchanged, I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases. I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general. I'm sure you have many questions. While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises. For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.

[musicales]

doesn't that kind of give the Gbrowser game away a bit?

[Brett_Tabke]

Not at all. I don't think this is related to that potential at all.

First, this is not the first browser guy Google has hired. They had several of the core netscape programmers on staff as early as 99.

A search engine robot and a browser are identicle on the front end. Both of them download pages and extract data to do something with it. A browser throws it up on a screen, while a robot throws it in a cache to be decoded.

Google was rumored in 2000 to be using parts of Netscape to extract usable page data. The data analysis from cruching a page with a browser, just before it spits to the screen, would be fascinating to a search engine.

Things you could do:
- The complete elimination of hidden text from *any* code based source.
- The interpretation of div's and css with 100% accuracy.
- Key word 'spamming' could all but be eliminated in all it's form.

The only surprise here is that there isn't more public cross pollinization between se's and browsers.

[treeline]

Maybe Google realizes they don't need their own browser, they just need astounding integration with a free and open source browser that's the best out there.

[Clark]

A browser wouldn't hurt them though. Would Google be better off with a Picasa picture browser, or an internet browser with astounding FORCED integration? Not to mention give them some playing room to compete with MS.

[pmkpmk]

Maybe they want to - finally - make their OWN Google-toolbar for Firefox. One with a PR-feature that truly works....

[BigDave]

This makes a lot of sense to me, even if it was just as support of the Open Source community by paying his salary. It would certainly be worth the money in goodwill alone.

I personally have suspected that for several years that Google has a hacked up version of Moz to help them with spam investigations. It certainly would not hurt to have someone on the payroll to help scratch Google itches when it comes to getting certain hooks integrated into the standard codebase.

[borisbaloney]

Support for Firefox / Mozilla / Netscape history searching with Google Desktop anyone?

[Chndru]

One word comes to mind..

XUL, anyone?

[GoogleGuy]

I happened to meet Ben the other day; he seems like a really nice guy.

[gethan]

I think we should take this at face value. Google have no interest in a Microsoft dominated browser base - best way to ensure that changes is fund the most prominant alternative - good way to do that - pay the salaries of the developers. All the other things will be secondary considerations.

GG > I happened to meet Ben the other day; he seems like a really nice guy.

Well google couldn't employ anyone evil ;)

Hope it works out well - I for one am looking forward to the next Firefox release.

[AhmedF]

Google XUL already exists: [google.com...] :)

[Clark]

I'm amazed how many people are poo-pooing a google browser. THERE WILL BE a google browser. Bet on it. And they'll find an innovative way to make money off it. Google loves to offer things for free and then turn it around. They know they can't beat IE unless they give people a free option. They love to innovate. And although people don't seem to see it, browsers have a lot of room to innovate. And Google has the power to change the protocol the Internet rides on. This is a no brainer.