Everyone seems pretty excited at news that Google has invested a whopping $1-million (say it with a Doctor Evil sneer — it’s more fun) in Maxthon, the browser that seems to have taken China by storm. Mike Arrington at TechCrunch says that it’s just part of a larger strategic arrangement between the two, and that set tongues wagging all over the blogosphere.
What does Google have in mind for Maxthon? What does this mean for Firefox? I don’t think it means much of anything, to tell you the truth. And it’s not just the fact that $1-million is about what Google spends on anchovies for the free gourmet pizza they serve in the Googleplex cafeteria every Wednesday afternoon. I also can’t see Google getting all worked up about a browser that is effectively an add-on for Internet Exploder Explorer.
And yes, I know you can change the rendering engine to Gecko (which powers the Firefox browser). It’s still an add-on, or a front end, or whatever you want to call it. And yes, it has lots of cool features, and I know it had tabs before IE. Whatever. I think the main interest for Google is the Chinese angle, and the fact that converting Maxthon’s built-in search to Google power would be a foot in the door where Baidu currently dominates.