Multiple sources are confirming that the Chinese/Israeli startup behind the Maxthon Browser has sold a minority stake to Google. The total investment size is rumored to be around $1 million. We are also hearing that this investment is part of a “much larger strategic deal” between the two companies.
Maxthon has had over 80 million downloads of its browser, and over half of its users are in China. Maxthon-originated searches may account for up to 25% of total Baidu traffic, according to one source.
At the very least we expect the strategic deal to involve replacing the default search option in the browser from the Baidu search engine in China and Yahoo in other countries with Google search. The deal may also go beyond search and involve integration with other Google services directly into the browser. Maxthon would then be promoted on Google as a preferred browser.
The deal was apparently done at least two months ago, but the companies have delayed releasing the news. We’ve contacted Netanel Jacobsson at Maxthon about this story, but he has declined to comment. We also have an email into Google PR for comment.
Maxthon has raised less than $6 million prior to this investment. Seed financing came from Morten Lund and WI Harper in March 2005, and CRV invested around $5 million in the company in March 2006.
See all
Post
If only it used Gecko for its rendering engine….
The default search engine in Maxthon is Yahoo. That’s likely to change with the new deal.
Amit - That is what I’m hearing. See para 3 above. It’s buried in there.
This is great news. I’m a big Maxthon fan, ever since MyIE came along and gave me my very first bearable IE browsing experience.
And they not only improved the IE experience, but also the Mozilla experience. I used to use dozens of extensions to get Firefox working just like Maxthon (tab clicking, tab dragging, super drag n go, etc). Now, most of those features have been built into Firefox.
Congrats, Maxthon.
Why doesn’t Microsoft take ownership of Maxthon?
If one overlooks the inherent issues with the Trident engine, Maxthon is a spectacular product.
I’m still following Maxthon hype! Gonna download it… no matter how bad the brower is. I will use it more than firefox browser.
Browser that sucked is OPERA. No one use it. Why? javascript screw up, button shape screw up, flash failure, active x won’t work, very very very very very annoying browser banner ads, pisses web 2.0 designer, css mess up, crashes, too slow, lots of annoying menu links to look at, show off too much, web developers hated OPERA.
“Maxthon would then be promoted on Google as a preferred browser.” - This would be a very interesting step, and I don’t beleive in it. Google has some workers from Firefox, and they have marketing campaings about Firefox, too. It would be very strange from them if they take Maxthon as a preferred browser.
“I see next hype”, your list is very far from the truth.
But Bártházi, Google is already promoting the Internet Explorer with Google Toolbar.
Why shouldn’t they add Maxthon as a third alternative?
I wonder how Maxthon compares to iRider (also based on IE)?
I’ve been using iRider for several years. It’s vertical tabs and ultra-fast rendering make it my first choice when doing web based research where I need to spin through multiple sites and pages.
Partial Ownership!!
Talk about Google tactics.
Sounds like an attempt to jockey for position in China and other markets by pushing Google search through the browser — I’d be surprised if it amounts to much more than that. I mean, isn’t Maxthon just a wrapper for IE? I find it hard to believe that’s what Google wants to commit to as a browser.
I agree with Mathew… I think Google is just trying to expand their reach into countries where their search is not so popular. If this browser has a large enough market share in those countries… and it currently uses yahoo as the default search… Google could stand to gain a lot.
Not so long time ago it was a lot of rumours that Google developing it’s own browser named (surprise! surprise!) Gbrowser. Google even registered domain name gbrowser.com.
So, I’m gonna register gmaxthon.com
Mathew, I agree with you. I would guess that this is just a scheme to take some of the search traffic from Baidu. Maxthon as a preferred browser would doesn’t mean that it’s THE preferred browser. I don’t doubt that Google will continue to push Firefox (as long as Google is the default search engine built into Firefox).
This seems far from an endorsement and more of a marketing strategy.
Sorry for half-offtopic (it’s about Google), but… Anyone knows some details about Google using Yahoo’s YUI on their Custom homepage. Click the thumb here: http://web.reflektor.cz/google.....-yahoo_70/
Jeffy, the maining perpose of taking partial ownership of Maxthon is to boost 谷歌’s traffic in China, not worldwild.
Have used Maxthon for the last 2 or 3 years… But stuck with pre 2.0 versions…. Maxthon introduced some killer functions like undo close and the integrated notepad… However, speed and “snappiness” is still an issue… which is why I jumped to Firefox…. Anyway, I still have the four main browsers installed on my PC… I have Opera as well…
WTF Maxthon browser are you fucking kidding me…. This piece of shit is based on the IE browser which has held up front-end web development by 10 years. Come on Google what are you thinking! The last thing we need is another browser based on bad code. If they were smart, which normally they are, they would just do the same thing that Apple has done with Safari. Take the base code for the khtml browser and add to it. It’s open-source (free!!) and the license allows you to do whatever you want to it, including keeping the new code you’ve created in house to yourself. So Google there are two choices here one build and market a browser based on standards compliant code and move the web forward or build one based on code that has pissed off every professional front-end web developer in the world and hold back the web even more! The choice is yours, god help us.
I hope this is more than just search stats.
Maxthon 2 sucks (in all the way’s that IE 7 sucks ass).
However, Maxthon 1.x is the best browser I have ever used. I hope they help the company expand and make Maxthon even better.
I remember reading about Maxthon two or three years ago on the PCMag forums and thinking, “What the hell, let’s try it.”
I ended up using it almost exclusively until about 3 months ago, when it started to crash for no apparent reason, and I was compelled to switch over to Firefox.
It bears mentioning that I wasn’t, and still am not, 100% comfortable with Firefox, though I’ve managed to make my experience as close to that of Maxthon as I can.
Great browser. Great news for the developers. I hope this goes far, though I have to admit that I’m getting a little weary of Google appearing everywhere very quickly.
So google is paying 1 million for 25% of the china default search
These guys are good
- RB
Maxton seems to have great features, but I still fail to grasp why the heck it uses Trident.
Hey james…
Real business model for web 2.0
This is what web 2.0 should do… Billionaires & companies should buy very young startup companies that takes risk.
Take… take… take… win… win.. win….Stockmarket will jump high on very young companies. Google stock is amazing — all time high
Old companies & billionaires started lose ratings super fast. For example,
Microsoft release spreadsheet on shelf. no one will buy it. More young people started to use Google Spreadsheet online.
People are looking forward to new web 2.0 operating system.
Not linux, unix, redhat, sco, and windows. hippie age operating system is getting too old and growing white hairs for everyone.
I need web 2.0 operating system ready or bush era operating system.
G-browser?
Google may not just replace the search provider, but it may change the browser core engine as well. Maxthon is famous for it’s enhancements rather than the browser engine.
“I need web 2.0 operating system ready or bush era operating system.”
Are we now calling all modern computing advances “Bush era” developments? I believe I missed that memo.
Hey wait, isn’t that the new Office version? “Microsoft Office Bush-Era Standard Edition”?
I really should upgrade from this old version of Office BE (Bubba Edition)
Oh, man. This is huge. Maxthon2’s beta is awesome as it is. Now that there’s some google behind the scenes..this is going to be incredible
I love Maxthon…all the features of Firefox built in from the start (ie. mouse gestures, ad block, random other stuff I can’t remember) with the compatibility of IE (hate it or love it, its still what most sites design for).
Also, something many previous commenters may not know about….you can change the core from Trident to Gecko in Maxthon. Maxthon was designed specifically as a shell for whatever engine you choose to use…thus, you can get the inherent “security” of Firefox, with all the features of Maxthon built in from the start (of course, the lack of Greasemonkey in Maxthon is what makes me keep all 4 major browsers installed, for various purposes…mainly use Maxthon & Firefox simultaneously though).
Anyone ever notice that it totally screws up with the aol search redirector?
I only see this problem with
“Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461
; Q312461; Maxthon)”
Google takes over the world.
I used to use Maxthon and I wondered why there was all this fuss about Firefox. I finally switched to Firefox when I saw the abundance of extensions out there.
Anyone thinks Maxthon can be a piece to the Google Apps puzzle?
Maxthon browser founders of Google shareholders denied rumors !!
as per this post …
http://64.233.179.104/translat.....8181.shtml
Maxthon founder denied Google invest rumor - Sina.com
People in China use Maxthon because it can funnel traffic through a Web proxy and circumvent government information controls.
Hmm.. apparently no IE7 fans read TechCrunch huh? FWIW, was a die hard Firefox fan but had to tolerate the memory leaks and problems with Flash.
When IE7 came out, I switched and have never looked back.
This moves seems like something that Google would have done a long time ago (I thought with Firefox). I used to use Maxthon as my primary browser but if the extensions do not follow, the people will not follow. Maxthon is def. lighter and quicker that Firfefox but there are too many extensions that I depend on.
—
Shredder
Also a long term Maxthon/2/myie2 fan, its everything a top end browser should have built in. There is no other browser that comes close to offering the best built in features/shortcuts/speed/skins/plugins that this browser has going for it. I should think the Maxthon devs will come up with some very good tight intergration of google features built into Maxthon, that can be good thing. Although just how big and Evil Google could become maybe it might not be a good thing.
Silly Microsoft really should have invested in Maxthon sooner, its the only thing that I can see keeping most maxthon users using the IE7 engine, it provides a much better frontend than IE7. It could have been a good team, MS focusing on the engine, Maxthon Frontend… If the rumours are true that Maxthon could in the future use the gekko engine or any other future engine, then it could be gloomy days for IE. IE8 will really have to a damn good advancement. As for the slow flaky strap on extension browser crapfox.. goodluck to them, Maxthon 2.0 is showing far more advancements in better user experience than FF3.0…. and Opera.. bah
Its about better/fast user experiences for the future, tighter intergration of browser features with websites and customization.
I used maxthom for a year, it wasn’t bad, but when new IE7 came out, there was no reason to use it.
Downloading Maxthom, it appears it will also become mainstream browser soon.
Maxthon founder Bloodchen denied this canard!
http://ya.iyee.cn/2007/04/maxt.....n-our.html
Google is clearly continuing to pursue the Chinese market.
pallet jack:
Bingo.
Also the income generated by pushing the default google search, should allow Maxthon development to be on par with Firefox’s(Maybe not generating dozens of millions to Mozilla like ff, but something proportional to the maxthon userbase)
i think we read in future more about Maxthon, but why not - the Browser is cool - the Investor is the Devil
That’s good new for Maxthon. In terms of usability it’s the best browser out there. Yes, you can set up FF to have the same features, but you need at least 10 extensions.
Maxthon is one of the best browsers I’ve ever tried. And it may become much more better when version 2.0 final will be realesed.
Maxthon looks like a crazy combination of IE6 and IE7…. Google is investing money into Maxthon to help break into the Chinese market, which the China govt has been keeping them out of, that’s all.
Opera is faster, more secure, and has all the features Maxthon has, plus a whole lot more, and it’s far more customisable.
http://ziosys.com/ is a scam website.
bradtard LOL
I never realized that maxthon was chinese based or big in china. That’s pretty crazy.