Doug Ross @ Journal

My Speculation on Gbrowser

The G2 seems obvious: Google is building a browser. It's hiring Firefox developers and has acquired the GBrowser domain name. What I haven't seen is speculation on the sort of browser Google might build. Here are some quick, speculative thoughts:

Built on the Firefox platform and completely open sourced (all changes released back to Sourceforge)

Aside from the inherent support for Google search (i.e., the Firefox/Google toolbar), News, Groups and Shopping search will also be integrated from the default install

More importantly: complete integration with Gmail (i.e., toolbar icons to indicate a new message was received, etc.)

More importantly: new blogging wizards will provide the ability to instantly create a hyperlinked blog post to blogger.com and other Google blog-capable properties

Complete integration with Picasa and its data storage format (upload/download from various photo hosting and printing sites)

In other words, GBrowser will expose an integrated, thick-client desktop to all of the mostly browser-based services at Google's massive server farm.

Will you even need Windows after you install GBrowser? Remember, GBrowser will run on almost any platform imaginable. So the answer is probably: no, you won't need to run Windows once you've been hooked on Google's server crack.

That's why Microsoft is hitting back hard with their own extensive offerings patterned in the Google image. Too little vision, too late for Microsoft? Unlikely. Microsoft is nothing if not persistent, rich and combative. So it should be a heck of a war.

I, for one, plan on sitting back, watching, and enjoying all of the free services while they last.