What Are Google’s Browser Plans?

Stephan Spencer at CNET writes a speculative post on Google’s browsers plans. Google hasn’t said much on the subject in over a year, when CEO Eric Schmidt sidestepped the question by answering “We would only do so…if we thought there was a real user benefit.”

People often point to the cozy relationship between Google and Firefox when talking about Google’s browser plans. But Google also invested in the Maxthon browser earlier this year. It was a very small investment - just $1 million. But there were rumors of a much larger strategic deal between the companies, too. Neither side has officially acknowledged the investment or the strategic deal to date.

Maxthon is little known in the U.S. Half of its downloads occur in China, though, and it is a big player there. Whether Google’s strategic plans for Maxthon extend beyond China is anyone’s guess.

A lot of this would be cleared up if Google (or Maxthon) made an announcement on the subject. But what we want has little to do with what’s best for Google’s business. If they do launch a browser, and/or acquire Maxthon, we almost certainly won’t hear about it until it actually happens.

Texty: Dead Simple Content Creation And Editing

Texty is a dead simple but useful new internet service that you can use to quickly create and edit content on a web page with zero HTML or programming skills.

Go to the site, start typing text in a WYSIWYG editor, format it and add images. Click a button and get an embed code. Your text will appear in whatever website you add the code to. And if you want to make changes, go back to Texty and edit it. The changes will flow to whatever sites you’ve embedded it on. You can also add comment functionality to a piece of text, and create a RSS feed.

There are lots of great and easy to use content management systems on the web already. Blogging software is just one example. But if someone is working on a web page outside of something like a blog and wants to add a bit of text and graphics, this is a good solution. See our coverage of JS-Kit which has similar tools. I was surprised at how many people are looking for something exactly like this.

I’ve embedded a bit of text and an image below. Everything below this paragraph, including the image, is actually embedded from Texty.

Texty is an easy to use content creator using a WYSIWYG interface. I am using it to create this text now and will insert it into techcrunch as an example. Allows basic formatting, anchor links and image insertion. Can't seem to float images though.

SF Chronicle Trims Business Section; The Best Are Gone

We all knew big layoffs were coming at the San Francisco Chronicle, but I had hoped that they’d try to keep at least one of the business/tech writers that is responsible for my occasional purchase of a copy of the paper. No luck.

The paper that is losing $1 million per week could fire every journalist it has on staff and still not break even. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying. 80 reporters, photographers and copy editors plus 20 in management will be gone by end of summer.

And the best reporters aren’t waiting around to see who gets laid off. They are walking out the door, into better jobs.

Jessica Guynn and Dan Fost are gone. They the reporters who were regularly attending events, talking to tech execs and developers and generally gunning for the interesting stories. Both resigned. Fost is freelancing. Guynn got a raise and a new job at the L.A. Times covering silicon valley.

Ellen Lee, Ryan Kim, Verne Kopytoff and Tom Abate remain to cover business and technology. They are fine writers, but the loss of Guynn and Fost is a serious blow to the newspaper. I found that when I was reading an interesting story in the Chronicle, it was usually written by one of them.

One bit of good news. David Lazarus, the brilliant strategist who suggested that only newspapers are qualified to do “real” journalism, is among those who’ve left. I’ll miss his occasional rants, but his blog-hate wasn’t helping the newspaper.

Al Saracevic, who’s taken an occasional public shot at TechCrunch, was promoted to Business Editor - he now controls the entire business section of the paper. Al is an incredibly nice guy but, like Lazarus, he’s firmly in the “does’t get new media” camp.

These losses may have made the bottom line look marginally better for this fast sinking ship. But losing the talent isn’t going to make people want to read the paper. They should have done everything they could to have kept Fost and Guynn.