"I'm willing to bet that somewhere in the Google computer system are the seeds of a browser." - Gary Stein, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

Looks like Google is poaching some of the best minds from Microsoft in what could be an attempt to start work on its own browser to challenge IE. Many of the poached staff all have excellent experience in the field of browsers. Adam Bosworth, is credited with being a driving force not only behind IE, but Microsoft's database-management program, Access. Joe Beda is, or rather was, the lead developer on Avalon, the new interface for the next version of Windows, Longhorn.

Google has also been poaching from other companies, such as Sun Microsystems. They have hired Joshua Bloch, one of the main developers of the Internet programming language Java, from Sun Microsystems.

Please note that everything seems a little "hush hush" at the moment, and that nothing is confirmed. But a Google browser could seriously benefit the company, and ensure the continuance of Google as the largest and most popular search engine on the planet.

If they had half a brain, they would buy or take over Firefox and use that as their new Google browser.

Lets not forget all the ad banners that will appear in the browser, and that it will use google as the only search tool. They aren't going to spend all that development money for nothing.

How do you buy an open source browser?

I don't know... surely they can? If not, they can certainly base their browser on it and make it open source as well. Microsoft don't give IE away for nothing as part of the OS - it was a brilliant move for them back in 1997-8. Google should do the same and use Firefox to make a Google Browser and make it open source, with its own APIs and stuff. That's just my opinion, I think it would be a good idea.

Yes, but if it is open source then someone could create a version without ad banners, or using a different search engine. That would impact google's revenue, so it won't happen. There is no such thing as a free lunch :=).

Maybe they'll buy Opera.

We need a brand new browser, built from the ground up with security and standards compliance in mind. Firefox is nice but it is based on ancient code (Netscape) and IE is not only based on ancient code (NSCA Mosaic) but it also hasn't been updated in ages. It's time for something fresh.

Maybe you'll sign in!

Mozilla was written from scratch since the open source developers thought Netscape codebase was useless. There is no Netscape in Mozilla of Firefox. And how do you know what is under the hood of IE? You work for Microsoft?

As for standards. Mozilla browsers adhere to them unless you consider MS proprietary "features" as some sort of a standard. And one propably couldn't make a MS compatible browser without paying hefty fees to MS.

Opera is pretty secure. I think their security issues (all solved by now) can be counted using the fingers on one hand.

Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.