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Tuesday 15th February 2005

Ask Jeeves to offer its own version of Firefox? 9:35AM, Tuesday 15th February 2005

Ask Jeeves has begun talks with Mozilla that could see a version of Firefox under the search engine's name as early as this year.

In the Ask Jeeves blog, Tuoc Luong, EVP Technology, reveals that he met with Mozilla Organisation representatives to discuss 'how Ask can make contributions to Mozilla that make sense', notably in two areas: the Firefox browser and desktop search. 'I shared that Mozilla browser didn't do it for me but Firefox certainly converted many of AJ engineering (including myself) over exclusively to Firefox,' writes Luong. 'We explained that



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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.'

He asked Mozilla what would be the impact of Google's hiring of Firefox developer Ben Goodger, amid rumours that it is planning its own browser. 'They didn't seem to be upset or too concerned,' he writes. 'They said that they have other people who work elsewhere but contributed significantly to mozilla.org. This indicates that they expect Ben to continue contributing and not bring Google's bias into the equation any more than other company sponsored Mozilla contributors.' Luong also discussed the possibility of open sourcing Ask Jeeves' desktop search, whether the core desktop indexing technology or possibly the entire desktop search application. Mozilla said that it would have to evaluate the software before deciding to become a partner

Simon Aughton

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