Popular search site Ask Jeeves is pondering whether to develop a Firefox-based or derived Web browser of its own and whether to donate part if not all of its desktop search code to the open-source world.
"Two weeks ago, Lanzone and I met with (the Mozilla Organization) at their office in Mountain View. The main purpose was to discuss Ask Jeeves and mozilla.org working together and how Ask can make contributions to Mozilla that make sense," said Ask Jeeves executive vice president for technology Tuoc Luong, in a posting on the Ask Jeeves blog.
Luong wrote that the discussion included the notion of open-sourcing Ask Jeeves desktop search as well as an Ask Jeeves browser.
"We're open at two levels," he said of the open-sourcing of desktop search. "Contributing just the core desktop indexing technology or possibly the entire desktop search application. They discussed how/what they would evaluate before accepting a major piece of code/product contribution: code size, internationalization, etc. Whether or not we partner with Mozilla on this effort, Chris and team thought it was a good idea for us to pursue overall."
Luong also said Firefox "converted many of (Ask Jeeves's) engineering (personnel) over exclusively to Firefox. We explained that we want to support and leverage Firefox by building extensions to and plug-ins within Firefox. We discussed the fact that it doesn't make sense for us to build a browser from scratch, but we think building Ask specific functionalities on top of Firefox to build an AJ-branded or co-branded browser could make sense in 2005."
Officials from both companies confirmed they met at Mozilla's California offices, and other published reports suggested Ask Jeeves' interest came as search competitors are getting more comfortable supporting Firefox and Mozilla—right down to Yahoo releasing a Firefox version of its browser toolbar, and Google hiring Firefox's lead engineer, Ben Goodger, in January, even if Goodger is continuing to donate half his time back to Mozilla.
