Most of us have heard the rumous, fuelled by this article, stating that one of the lead developers of Firefox is now working primarily for Google. Personally, I can’t really see any reason why a company such as Google would start to employ someone with expertese in this field, if they were not planning some sort of desktop application.

Whether or not this is specifically a web browser is obviously difficult to speculate. Although it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Google are automatically developing a web browser, I think there are several issues to consider. Firstly, what reason do Google have for entering this market? They are by all means an innovative and progressive company, and can clearly see that Firefox use is starting to rocket. With such a huge growing competitor, it would be fairly ignorant to try to enter the market.

Secondly, I find it very unlikely indeed that the Lead Engineer of Firefox, Ben Goodger would be happy to move away from developing Firefox to start work on a competitive software application. People like this have strong principles, and he has been with Firefox from the very start. I don’t see how he would have turned his back on this project to share his knowledge with a direct rival.

I also think it would be ignorant to overlook the main purpose of Google. Searching. Google’s main goal is simple, effective searching of the Internet. It’s what they have always been best at, and why they are such a huge phenomenon across the Internet. They have, recently, tried to branch out into other openings such as their Desktop Search, these have not been anywhere near as important to them as their search engine.

So, the only reasonable conclusions I can come to is that either:

• Google are developing some type of hybrid-search browser, with very heavily integrated search features. Maybe a sidebar which suggests images, video and links relating to the page you are currently viewing… also probably integrating with their advertising programmes.
• Or, Google are trying to develop and improve on new, alternative desktop applications. I’m not in a position to speculate what these could be, but if they follow the same innovative, original approach they have with every other project - they will be worth getting excited about.