G(oogle|mail|browser)?

I’m for anything that dilutes the popularity and usage of IE. Microsoft has shown time after time that they aren’t very interested in Web Standards and making sure IE is compatible. IE deserves to die, but Microsoft has such a monopoly, by bundling IE for free as the default browser on PCs, that it will take large companies like Google to break its dominance. Any new browser that Google creates will undoubtedly be compatible with current Web Standards. Just look at the job Apple has done with Safari…

I’m not sure that using Safari as an example of what Google can do is a good idea.

It’s a nice little browser, but it has its own issues with rendering CSS. For a start, it won’t allow you to colour its own widgets - such as form buttons, etc which isn’t a huge problem but an unexpected one. It also doesn’t support any form of text caret / text selection which makes WYSIWYG impossible. Konqueror are writing an implementation to allow this but it looks like it’ll be proprietry which means we’ll have to have 3 separate javascript files and or routines to allow WYSIWYG to work.

We can really do without a brand new one creating more problems. I’d love it to share the mozilla engine but that’s unlikely as they’ve poached 4 IE developers.

There is evidence that it could be gecko based as there was a bug on bugzilla regarding a google branded browser, which quickly got made private for the reason that it was a dupe of a bug regarding google working with mozilla. Linking straight to the blog post about this bug - http://www.deftone.com/blogzilla/archives/google_browser.html

If it’s gecko based, I’ll be 110% behind the project just as long as development of the core rendering engine is in-sync with Mozilla.

With the weight of Google behind a mozilla branded browser, the end could really be in sight for Internet Explorer. It would also help boost Google’s popularity with the geeks if they take the fight straight to Microsoft.

Thanks for the link Ben.

It would certainly solve the chicken/egg situation some developers have reagrding standards as a google backed standards browser would produce more significant percentages than moz/firefox have.

I really hopes its Gecko based or AT LEAST standards compliant. I’m sure google will strive for standards compliance based on the company principles they set out. I look foward to seeing what they do if its standards compliant.

Anyways, since when is Google not popular with the geeks? Its only not popular with the freaks who think Google is out to get them and is spying on them, which this will just further their assumption since the browser will most obviously be spyware, right?

Now, if only they would hire php developers like ourselves to really develop some next gen applications.

It would make sense that the Google execs were smart enough to know it would be a complete waste to develop a whole new engine and mean as well when they have something like Mozilla they can base it on. I could be wrong but if thats the case its definitly a good thing. As long as the rendering engine is the same it doesnt matter how different the interface is for web developers.

I think the only way to defeat I.E. would be to bundle some other browser as the DEFAULT browser in new computers, … Hopefully someone with the money can come along and do that and really piss MS off and then mabye they’ll start actually caring for the customer (developer).

Google could get a pretty big slice of the browser market.

Consider: everybody in the universe knows about Google (except in China, where it’s been blocked repeatedly); Google offers a number of services that could be made much better with a browser that allows for psuedo-desktop, psuedo-web-based software; and Google has the money to pull it off.

I don’t know whether they’re doing it (I’d say more, if I’d really formulated an opinion), but many people think Google is building a web-based platform. Imagine if you could download a browser that allowed Google system-level access with all the benefits of the web. Millions of people will use Gmail, millions would love news alerts, and millions would love search right on their desktop. Google just has to put everything together…

what does “web-based platform” mean ?
What is the difference to a normal browser (like firefox or opera ?)

Interesting, IE deserves to die yes :), But i think there is something more in google productions. Something they don’t want to show to impress us all :), I only going to wish to be a nice clean browser compatible enough

I used “web-based platform” (I posted the comment three above this, but forgot my name ;-)) to refer to a browser-type application that provides much more development power. For now developers are limited to HTML and the occasional bit of JavaScript.

A “web-based platform”, as I envision it, would be a platform that ties into the desktop system and allows much more control from a remote location.

For instance, if you had what I imagine, you wouldn’t do thinks like accidentally close your browser before posting; Google’s apps would tie into the computer and would be partially event-driven, so they’d ask you to confirm that you want to close without saving.

It’s a pretty cool idea, I think, that nicely bridges the gap between desktop and webtop.

ok, but how secure can that be ?
I do not want to be the pessimistic guy who alwayas say: This is not possible it unsecure.
But I see that even know it is a huge job to flick the security holes in firefox for example or IE.
If the browser is more integrated, hackers could use my PC even more(today through trojans).

So this post is not to say: Thats not a good thing.
I do think it would be great !
My question: How feasable is a secure and more in the OS integrated system ? Is that possible. For me it sounds hard … or can it be even easier BECAUSE it is more integrated and you can secure it more ??? (the last part is probably nonsens … )

On a random note about standards compliance, do you really invision a company to care about standards support if any of their own webpages lack any whatsoever (microsoft.com is a standards holy grail compared to gmail.com, and google.com isn’t too shabby either).

I personally think that they shouldn’t make a new browser, but perhaps team up with the Mozilla people to help out with Firefox. Google and Mozilla together could beat Microsoft any day. I mean, with Mozilla’s experience with browser development and google’s uh… googlyness, they would seriously kick butt.
However, as long as it’s standards complient and I can compile it (I run linux), I’m happy.

I must be sleeptalking… ie programmers are going to set the web standard browser for google, the browser loads straight from google, advertising and spam included, so we all buy a faster ISP and a new computer? Arnold said something about firing up the .com