Google Wants to Improve Web Browsers
Google yesterday responded to the buzz over Gbrowser.com, the mythical Google powered web browser that bloggers and forums have been buzzing over. In a statement to the Indian press, Google said that it was engaged in developing technology that was aimed at bringing about improvements in web browsers.
DepikaGlobal reports that Sergey Brin discussed the specualtion with reporters; ”There has been much speculation. But our work is focussed on improving the browsing experience,” Brin added ”Today’s browsers are doing a pretty good job, but they can be improved. What we are looking to do is to enhance the quality of the browsing experience.”
Mr Brin and company co-founder and President (Products) Larry Page are on a visit to India even as Google looks to expand operations at its R and D facility in Bangalore and the technology centre in Hyderabad. Even while putting his faith in text continuing its dominance as the dominant mode of communication on the internet, Mr Brin said Google was undertaking research on expanding image searches, speech and multimedia content.
There has been much fanfare in the Mozilla fan camps about the possibility of Google using Mozilla browser technology to produce a GBrowser – the Google Browser. Over the past month, the news and speculation has escalated to the point where even Google itself is acknowledging the whispers among the tech community by featuring a section on Google News devoted to the browser mill.
Hirisings at Google helped to fuel the buzz. The newest Google employees are four people who worked on Internet Explorer (one being Adam Bosworth), another one from Java lead developers (Joshua Bloch) and another guy (Joe Beda) who was working on future Microsoft technologies like Avalon and Longhorn.
Google could not have picked a better time to be planning a new browser tool (that is, if they are). Security flaws and adware/spyware attacks have fueled a small but significant switch from Microsoft IE to Mozilla based browsers. WebSideStory reported that Microsoft’s share of browser users who visited top e-commerce and corporate sites shrank from 95.6% in June to 93.7% in September. Further more the tracking firm’s study showed that people using browsers made by Mozilla grew from 3.5% to 5.2%.
