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Google buys partial stake in browser

by Chris Gilmer on April 10, 2007 at 11:30 AM

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.

Tags: baidu, browser, china, google, web

Comments

Mucho OchoApr 10th 2007 1:42PM

Neutral

There's a typo in your link -- it should be the Maxthon browser...http://www.Maxthon.com

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JackApr 10th 2007 2:30PM

Neutral

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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MysteriusApr 11th 2007 6:15PM

Neutral

@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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