BrowserPlus - Yet Another Thingie

Yahoo released its numbers yesterday which, if you don't count the $401 million they got from a one-time investment, are about the same as last year. Old Jerry is still touting the "we're still relevant" and "we're worth more than that mean old Microsoft says we are" lines... but in the meantime, it also appears as though they've actually been working on some new stuff.

Enter BrowserPlus.

Now, the Yahoo site is a little bit "light" on information - um... as is the rest of the Internet. Apparently there was a rumor a few years ago that a "Google Gears Killer" was in the works - and then it was announced that the project was dropped.

Apparently not.

According to Skylar Woodward, one of the dev team guys,- the BrowserPlus will be (is) a "software and software distribution framework that allows device developers (desktop, mobile, etc.) to seamlessly bridge the browser programming environment (DHTML, JS) to any component they can dream up (VoIP, image manipulation, data caching, etc.)."

Ummm... ok.

Doesn't sound anything like Google Gears to me. Google defines Gears as "an open-source project that enables more powerful Web applications, by adding new features to your Web browser." Oh yeah, and it allows programmers to create stuff that will work in a disconnected way.

BrowswerPlus describes itself: "Yahoo! BrowserPlus™ is software that lets you do more inside your web browser. BrowserPlus makes it easy to install and use web plug ins for a richer experience on the internet."

Ummm... ok. So it's really yet another proprietary plug-in running browser plug-in that will run widgets. Only on Yahoo! sites (for now).

*sigh*

I guess it was a cool idea 3 years ago when they started on it - but does the world really need another widget plug-in thingie from Microsoft Yahoo?