Google browser not planned, but possible

However, Schmidt left the door open to developing a browser if it saw some clear utility to users that was not otherwise being met in the market. "We would only do something ... if we thought there was a real end-user benefit," he said.

The Google executive has consistently downplayed questions about its ambitions to develop its own browser software by saying that the underlying assumption is that Google is taking up the battle that Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications Corp. lost to Microsoft during the 1990s.