Tags: Microsoft

Google’s new hiring might restart GBrowser rumors

TechWhack speculated way back in May that Google might consider launching its own version of a web browser to take Microsoft heads on in a market which is dominated by them. Internet Explorer has a major share with a product, which has not been updated in years and is lacking support for the latest web standards.

The speculation became a worldwide rumor when it was found that Google has indeed bought the domain GBrowser.com that was on the same lines of the domain GMail.com used by Google for their webmail service. They also did some high profile hiring in around September, which pointed towards the fact that Google indeed had a team working on a browser. However, nothing appeared and the company declared that they are not developing a browser.

However, media is still speculating on a possible version based on Mozilla Foundation’s Gecko engine enhanced with Google services. And the latest high profile hiring of lead engineer of the Firefox Web browser Ben Goodger would now fuel exactly that. Google in the past have contributed to Mozilla Foundation with noticeable contributions like the new Firefox Browser homepage hosted on Google’s web server.

Ben on his part has clarified on his personal Blog that his work on Firefox would remain unaffected as a result of this news. He would be working in Google as a software engineer and would be using half of his official time on Firefox development. Firefox in the recent days have created quite an impression on the World Wide Web. With millions of copies downloaded, latest stats have shown that the browser has taken up around 5% of the share of the web browser market.

If Google gives its name to a version of Firefox, it just might give it a boost Open Source Community needs to take back the web from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer!