Google And Browsers And More

I just read news, Google Snaps Up Top Firefox Programmer. The guy, Ben Googler, I mean Goodger, (how did his parents know, or rather ancestors), announced the news on his blog. That tells you where he belongs.

In one of Larry Ellison's biographies, the earlier ill-written one, there is talk of how the guy - his lifestory reads like fascinating - would promise of software that half the time never got delivered, but he hogged marketshare anyway! Google is the opposite of that. It delivers and surprises. Noone saw the digitizing libraries project coming.

But there is such noise Google is angling for a browser. That would be a major step. You have a slim machine running on Linux, you download a Google browser, you do your word procesing online - the technology is already there, just look at all the features with Blogger, Gmail meets all your email needs, personal as well as work, and so on, and where is Microsoft now! You handle all your text, audio, video, data processing stuff online. There is no Desktop, so to speak of. Wow. I mean, with Internet2, you have 10 gigabytes per second kind of speed. You are always on. With that kind of reliability, you won't need a desktop.



Two schools emerged within Microsoft in the mid-1990s, one Windows, but the other one wanted a new universe entirely around a browser. MSFT would be the gorilla dot com. But Gates squashed that effort. To Gates' credit, he gave some valid reasons, like, how do you make money if you give everything away! (Google's answer: you sell ads, stupid!)

Windows made Microsoft what it is, but it also might be the albatross around its neck.