What's left for Google to conquer? A browser of course! Michael Arrington reports that Google has just bought a minority stake in the Maxthon Browser. The browser currently has over 80 million downloads, with over half of the users living in China. Searchers from this browser seem to account for 25% of Baidu traffic, Google's competition in China. If Google replaces the default search option to direct to Google search, they have easily gained a nice spot in the Chinese market.This new purchase could spell a better relationship between Google and China, with whom they have had trouble with in the past. And it's going to make a lot of Google users happy to know that there is a small chance that Google will use their expertise to enter the full fledged browser marketplace.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-10-2007 @ 1:42PM
Mucho Ocho said...
There's a typo in your link -- it should be the Maxthon browser...http://www.Maxthon.com
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4-10-2007 @ 2:30PM
Jack said...
The only problem with this is that Maxathon is a horrible browser to use and built on the not-entirely-secure Internet Explorer browser. I personally believe Google can do better than this -- buying out others rather than building on their strengths.
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4-10-2007 @ 6:11PM
RP said...
With 81 million downloads, how does Maxthon marketshare compare to Firefox? (Or does it use an IE user-agent string, so we can't tell?)
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4-11-2007 @ 9:10AM
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4-11-2007 @ 9:11AM
nonuber said...
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4-11-2007 @ 9:23AM
nonumber said...
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4-11-2007 @ 6:15PM
Mysterius said...
@Jack: Easy, Jack. I don't think Google's stake in Maxthon is related to any browser it's thinking about building. Just like how Google's share in AOL doesn't necessarily mean that it plans to do... well, whatever AOl does these days. Besides, Google's even closer to Mozilla.
I do hope Google can leverage this into making it the default search option in Maxthon, though.
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4-20-2007 @ 3:32PM
Tim said...
Being a Y! Fan boy, I am wondering what Y! will do about this...
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