Following up on last month's speculation on Google building their own Web browser:
Last summer, Anil Dash suggested that it would be a good move for Google to develop a Google browser based on Mozilla. Give that kid a gold star because it looks more than plausible. Mozilla Developer Day 2004 was recently held at the Google Campus. Google is investing heavily in JavaScript-powered desktop-like web apps like Gmail and Blogger (the posting inferface is now WYSIWYG). Google could use their JavaScript expertise (in the form of Gmail ubercoder Chris Wetherell) to build Mozilla applications. Built-in blogging tools. Built-in Gmail tools. Built-in search tools. A search pane that watches what you're browsing and suggests related pages and search queries or watches what you're blogging and suggests related pages, news items, or emails you've written. Google Toolbar++. You get the idea.
On April 26, 2004, Google registered gbrowser.com. Here's the relevent bit of the WHOIS for gbrowser.com:
Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-1278108)
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View
CA
94043 USDomain Name: gbrowser.com
Created on..............: 2004-Apr-26.
Expires on..............: 2006-Apr-26.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Apr-26 16:46:39.
Thanks to Dave for the tip. Additionally, this NY Post article notes that Google is hiring folks formerly of Microsoft's IE team as well as other people that would be good bets to work on a browser.
Update: There was a bug in Mozilla's bug tracking system that was closed because "this is a duplicate of a private bug about working with Google. So closing this one." More info at Blogzilla. Thx, Phil.