There’s no doubt that Google has a focus on making their presence known around the Globe. Their latest move of investing money into the Maxthon Web Browser could be part of this effort, and really comes as no surprise.
Earlier today, TechCrunch reported that the Maxthon Browser has sold a stake to Google worth $1 million dollars. They’re also reporting that it’s a smaller part to the bigger picture between them.
We’ve covered Maxthon before – it’s a web browser based upon the Internet Explorer platform that has tabbed browsing and lots of customization. It’s a cross between Firefox and Internet Explorer.Their developers are based in Beijing, as well as a good portion of their users.
Half of all Maxthon users at this point are Chinese, and in fact, 17% of the Chinese web population uses the browser for web search.
Read/Write Web points out how Firefox may feel some jealousy towards this deal. Afterall, they’ve been Google’s #1 side kick in terms of web browsers go. However, I don’t think Firefox really has much reason to worry. If anything, Google is getting involved with Maxthon in hopes of making a bigger presence in China.
Another possible motive behind this is that Baidu is currently the default search for the Maxthon browser in China, and Yahoo is the default search engine elsewhere. With this deal, one would probably expect that those default searches would change to Google all around. Smart move Google.
Maxthon (Stable Version 1.5.9) – download
Maxthon Beta 2 – download
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Wow…first Mozilla’s Firefox now Maxthon. I tired out Maxthon it’s pretty good but I just don’t like the whole IE engine, I prefer the Gekko, KHTML, or the one from Opera. I really looking forward to Swift browser which is still in alpha stage right now, as it uses Webkit which is based on KHTML.
What ever happened to Firefox?
I agree with you, all of the extra features that Maxthon has makes it beter than IE but it still seems cluttered to me. Firefox and Opera are definitely my favorites because they are also cross-platform.