Peter Griffin: Kiwi input into Google venture

The last time young internet hotshot Ben Goodger returned home to Auckland he took the time to climb on to the roof of the Herald to appear in some photographs. Sitting cross-legged, he wore thick-rimmed glasses and a T-shirt with the word "Firefox" printed boldly across it.

The University of Auckland graduate has made a name for himself in the US internet industry as lead software engineer on Mozilla's Firefox internet web browser, which is rapidly gaining popularity. Some analyst groups put its market share at just over the 5 per cent threshold. Now he's set to jump aboard another leading internet company - Google

Goodger revealed on his website (Ben's Weblogs - see link below ) this week that his "source of income" had changed from Mozilla to Google from January 10.

As Goodger explained of his new working arrangements: "While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises. For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.

"My role with Firefox and the Mozilla project will remain largely unchanged, I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases. I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general."

Goodger's move to Google is great news for two reasons. For one, a Kiwi may well now have a hand in steering a strategic project at what has become one of the most innovative internet companies and one that late last year completed a very successful stock exchange listing.

His move into the Google camp also is a clue for the direction Google is heading - the development of its own web browser.

Unconfirmed rumours have circulated for some time that Google has its own browser in development. Small details, such as Google registering the "growser" domain, hint at its intentions.

Firefox is hot at the moment. More than 20 million copies of Firefox 1.0 have been downloaded since November, 300,000 on the first day alone. And for Goodger to turn his attention away from Mozilla is testament to the opportunity Google has laid before him.

At a minimum, it appears almost certain that Google has a collaboration with Mozilla in the works, perhaps incorporating all of Google's search features into the Firefox browser.

Rather than clicking through favourites in Firefox to get to Gmail, your own web log or the Google search engine, all of these services would likely be integrated into the browser with individual icons.

Google already is able to integrate its toolbar into Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. But it appears the crafty upstart wants the whole show for itself, perhaps making greater use of its advertising model to squeeze revenue from web browser usage.

If Google were fully integrated into Firefox, which is already a compelling alternative to Internet Explorer, it would make the smaller rival all the stronger.

The other scenario is that Google is planning to buy Firefox and is therefore comfortable with Goodger continuing to develop successive versions of the web browser.

Either option is good news for internet users. While a perfectly good browser in its own right, IE's exposure to vulnerabilities has frustrated users and pushed them towards Firefox, which has benefited from not being as closely tied to the operating system as IE.

Google's diversification over the last couple of years has been staggering. Not content with being the world's most popular internet search engine, it developed Froogle, an e-commerce addition to Google that allows users to search for goods and services among online vendors.

It caught the upsurge of interest in web logs with its own blogging service.

In a direct challenge to free webmail providers such as Yahoo and Hotmail last year it launched Gmail, giving users who sign up for free a hefty one gigabyte of data storage.

This week Google launched a dedicated search engine for TV clips called Google Video. Digital still photographs of thousands of TV shows have been indexed and in many cases written transcripts saved as well.

When a phrase of dialogue is entered into the search engine, a photo of the character saying it and the rest of the conversation will be displayed.

The next step is to deliver full-motion video clips, an increasingly realistic idea given the increase in use of high-speed internet connections.

All of those features wrapped into a tailormade web browser make sense.

And Goodger is definitely on the same page as Google. As he told the Herald last October, the Mozilla team was working with one goal in mind - to make a browser that makes the internet simple again.

"Do you remember how it was when you first went online? It was easier to search for things, easier to find things, there were fewer annoyances. That's what we want to get back to," he said.

Google appeared with the same philosophy - to make internet searches easier and more rewarding.