Maxthon, the Internet Explorer skin that makes IE look like a presentable browser, seems to have gotten Google’s attention. All those “Google Browser” rumors and pontifications may have had some substance after all.
TechCrunch is reporting that Google may have invested in Maxthon (PS: Maxthon’s link is not responding, weighed down, I am sure, by the sudden surge in traffic after the news broke).
This is a significant piece of news because Firefox’s rise has recently been observed to have stalled to an extent, with Opera having becoming free as air, and Maxthon having lined up its huge community of plugins to match the game-changing collection of Firefox extensions.
If Google’s ever-increasing repository of applications was somehow tied-in with a browser of Maxthon’s caliber (which still beats the clunky IE 7.0 hands-down) the browser wars could effectively come to halt. Firefox 3.0, already in beta, is scheduled to support the all too important feature of offline browsing, which will make it possible to use Google’s applications (and other such functionality) almost as good as desktop software (PS: there’s also the Adobe Apollo endeavor in a similar vein).
Does this augur well for Microsoft? I think so. Maxthon is little more than IE on steroids. It still needs IE as its spine. The plugin architecture of this joint team may well be augmented by Google’s participation. Welcome to “co-opetition”. For now though, I think Firefox still looks and feels the best, and its collection of extensions (to me) seems the most extensive and well-coded.
This post is tagged Musings
No Comments