All the major browsers have some sort of “privacy” mode that is suppose to let you browse the web without leaving, or collecting, personally identifying information.

With Google Chrome its called Incognito Mode but it it seems that it is far from being incognito according to Randy Abrams at the ESET security blog. Apparently he decided to test out Chrome’s Incognito Mode only to find out that upon going to a site he had never been to before Facebook was there to greet him.

I have previously blogged here and here about Facebook’s instant personalization, but let me spell it out for you.Facebook “Instant Personalization” destroys Google Chrome’s “Incognito mode”. There is nothing incognito about opening a clean browser with no cookies and going to a website you have never visited before and being called by name with your picture on the web page. Facebook and “Instant Personalization” partner sites deliberately ignores your obvious and explicit instructions NOT to track you.

And apparently it isn’t just Chrome that is getting sidestepped this way as Abrams pointed out in the post:

It is mind-boggling that Microsoft’s Bing ran an end game around the Microsoft Internet Explorer team by also defeating IE9’s “InPrivate Browsing” and poor Mozilla was caught in the crossfire as Microsoft and Facebook sneak around Firefox’s Private browsing feature as well. Apple’s Safari browser’s privacy mode was also hunted down and shot.

Welcome to the “socialization” of the web where your privacy obviously means nothing.

image courtesy of ESET

Chrome’s Incognito Mode – not so much incognito it seems for Facebook is a post from: The Inquisitr

Flock, a browser that was meant to incorporate social media apps and interactivity into the browsing experience before it was cool, is being retired at the end of April.

Flock was purchased by Zynga in April, which you may know as the company behind hot Facebook properties FarmVille and FrontierVille. At the time of purchase, Flock boasted 10 million users globally. The notice posted on Flock’s website recommended users switch to Mozilla or Chrome before security updates are discontinued later this month:

Support for Flock browsers will be discontinued as of April 26th, 2011. We would like to thank our loyal users around the world for their support, and we encourage the Flock community to migrate in the coming weeks to one of the recommended web browsers listed below.

Flock was released back in 2005, and gained a bit of steam along with the programs with which it integrated easily, like MySpace, Blogger and WordPress, became prominent. Flock’s team is being repurposed to build and work on Zynga apps.

Flock browser officially dies is a post from: The Inquisitr

What goes around comes around.

What was once old is new again.

Those are just a couple of old cliches that perfectly describe what is happening in technology these days. For anyone old enough to have been around technology long enough what we are seeing happen today with things like mobile computing, tablets, and Google’s ChromeOS that was shown to the public a couple of days ago the first reaction has to be along the lines of – haven’t we been down this road before?

Sure we have all the really cool graphics, smoking hot hardware, and constantly improving technology like wireless broadband and HTML5; but when you stop and look what we are doing is returning to the past single presentation of information and data that we had with DOS.

You got to admit though, it’s a great, and profitable, con job that is being pulled on us. After all why constantly push Moore’s Law when you can convince people that all they really need is lesser hardware that can only run full screen apps that are a shadow of what is possible.

As for that supposed multitasking that is being touted as innovation on our mobile handsets or tablets anyone who has used DOS in the pass will be the first ones to crack up laughing. After all this type of single full screen multitasking is nothing new it’s just a prettified version of DESQview, or DR_DOS; which later became NovellDOS.

Where we once had keyboard shortcuts to switch between running applications we now have screen taps or in the case of ChromeOS we have tabs to select. The only difference between our past world of DOS and the supposedly new world of apps and web operating systems is we now have pretty graphics and the segmentation of the user.

As much as the hype surrounding things like the iPhone, iPad, ChromeOS, or Android would have us believe that we are entering a new age what we are seeing is neither evolutionary or revolutionary. What we are seeing is an increasing attempt to silo the user into what are essentially the new portals of 2011.

Our digital world in 2011: The New DOS is a post from: The Inquisitr

As you probably know, it’s far less helpful to “foofle” things.

[GraphJam]

[Graph] Your browser’s memory for web addresses is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google’s Chrome browser has passed Apple’s Safari out into third place for US browsers, a milestone the newer browser option achieved in the UK last October.

Chrome, which debuted in October 2008, has been steadily gaining on Mozilla’s Firefox as an Internet Explorer alternative. IE now has a 52% market share, with Firefox following at an impressive 28.5% of users. Chrome edged in ahead of Safari in recent StatCounter data, with 8.97% to Safari’s 8.88%. StatCounter pulled the data from 847 million page views in the US.

The breakdown is a bit different among UK users, with about 55% still using IE. Firefox grabs a much larger share of the (steak and kidney?) pie across the pond, with just over 38% of users favoring it. Even the admittedly underrated Opera is trouncing Safari over there, with 4.4% to Safari’s 3.9% share.

Chrome’s rapid rise is impressive in the browser arena- while Firefox has burrowed deep into the market as a place users go when they graduate from IE, it’s had over seven years to get there. Chrome hasn’t even been available for two, and some of that time is beta only, and without options for Mac or Linux.

Have you ditched Firefox to come over the the Google side? What’s your go-to browser? Is anyone still using Flock?

Chrome surpasses Safari in US popularity, now ranked third is a post from: The Inquisitr

Regardless of the fact that there are some people out there recommending that companies use Internet Explorer 6 as a way to keep their employees from wasting work time on things like Facebook (and Google) the real world is catching on – Death to Internet Explorer 6.

StatsCounter just released a new statement that says that Internet Explorer 6 is finally dropping down below the 5% mark in U.S. usage.

Boston, US and Dublin, Ireland, Tuesday, 1st June, 2010: Usage of web browser Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in the US and Europe fell below the 5% mark for the first time in May, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that IE6 US usage has fallen to 4.7% from 11.5% 12 months ago.

“At these levels web developers now have valid justification not to support IE6 in the future,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. A number of sites including YouTube are already understood to have withdrawn support for IE6.

StatCounter Global Stats reports that IE8 US usage increased to 30.5% in May from 8.5% in the same month last year. IE7 is currently at 16.6% in the US.

“IE6 has been a bit of a pain for many web developers and designers who have often had to recode their site to get it to work. There are also security implications in its continued usage,” added Aodhan Cullen of StatCounter.

It’s none too soon either. Here’s hoping the numbers keep dropping – and fast.

Driving a stake through the heart of Internet Explorer 6 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Bet you think you are pretty smart when it comes to making sure that you don’t leave any trace of your information lying around the web when you are finished surfing. After all the first thing you do is install or update some sort of ad blocking software with any new system. You make sure that you clean out your cookies on a regular bases and some even go to the extent of turning off javascript on a site by site basis.

Yup you’re pretty clever. Those info gobbling sites don’t get anything from you.

Or do they?

Well according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation all those precautions are nice but may actually do little to stop sites from being able to tell who you are. It seems that the overwhelming number of browsers have unique signatures and it is these signatures that become your fingerprints as you wander the web.

EFF found that 84% of the configuration combinations were unique and identifiable, creating unique and identifiable browser “fingerprints.” Browsers with Adobe Flash or Java plug-ins installed were 94% unique and trackable.

“We took measures to keep participants in our experiment anonymous, but most sites don’t do that,” said EFF Senior Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley. “In fact, several companies are already selling products that claim to use browser fingerprinting to help websites identify users and their online activities. This experiment is an important reality check, showing just how powerful these tracking mechanisms are.”

Now isn’t that comforting to know.

Leaving your fingerprints all over the Web is a post from: The Inquisitr

Firefox 3.6 has finally been released after months of beta testing and bug fixes plus a few release candidates.

The new version of the popular web browser offers a host of new abilities, including a 20% increase in pageload times compared to Firefox 3.5. The browser also uses Gecko 1.9.2 web-rendering which adds to startup speed and stability, while offering faster and smoother Javascript controls.

The new version also includes a feature called “Personas” which lets users customize their Firefox setup with single clicks, not requiring a restart, while an auto-complete form function is available and support for the HTML5 platform is also shown off.

Check out the full set of new Firefox 3.6 features here.

It’s a bit surprising that the 3.6 version of the software is already available with release candidates only arriving at the start of this month, but regardless it’s here to stay and can be downloaded from the official Firefox homepage.

Firefox 3.6 Officially Released Today is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s hard to believe that it has almost been a year since Google Chrome first burst upon the scene but in that time the browser has seen improvements and very soon even Mac users will have their own version of the browsers.

While Chrome is still dwarfed by the other browsers there is a very good chance that it will break through the 5% marker according to internet analytics firm Clicky. As Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web notes in a post to mark this event “garnering nearly one twentieth of the browser market in just a year is no small feat”.

It will be interesting to see just what effect on the numbers a release of a Mac native version of Chrome. I’m betting considering all the talk I have seen on happening amongst Mac users I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chrome’s user numbers get close to the 8% mark.

image credit: The Next Web

Chrome numbers continues to climb is a post from: The Inquisitr

I have been using Chrome since the first day that the beta made its way to the web and I haven’t regretted it at all. In fact I wouldn’t want to use any other browser so it was nice to see that a new finalized version for this great browser has been released.

Among some of the stats that Google has provided with this release

• They’ve improved the Javascript performance by more than 150% since the first beta was released (very nice)
• Since Chrome 2 they’ve increased the Javascript performance by 25% (even nicer)
• There has been over 3,000 bugfixes in this release ( thank you !)

But most importantly for some is the theme support that is finally built-in to this release of Chrome. Once you’ve updated to the new version just click on the Options menu item and then select the Personal Stuff tab. At the bottom you will see the button to click to have Chrome display the Themes page.

As you can see there are some 29 themes currently available, including the original Chrome theme. Installing one of the themes is a simple as clicking on the Apply theme button and you are done. Myself I went with the Glossy Blue theme.

One of the other changes I’ve just noticed as well is that the layout for the New Tab page has changed as well.

Google’s Chrome gets themed and changes the New Tab page is a post from: The Inquisitr

Online advertising is big bucks and those bucks get even bigger with the more information that advertisers know about you and your habits – both on-line and off-line. From things like income and credit scores to whether you have a fishing license to what kind of car you drive your data is being collected everyday. For the major players like Acxiom it doesn’t matter whether that data is your on-line surfing and buying habits or if it is your off-line shopping habits – it’s all data for them to collect.

On-line much of this data collection happens as a result of ‘cookies’ – those simple little text files that websites drop on your computer as you visit, and buy from them. In the past these cookies were fairly simple things that let you login to a site automatically or remembered you items you wanted to buy at sites. Since then though they have gotten a lot more complex and carry a lot more information which companies like Acxiom suck up every minute of the day.

Consumers can avoid cookie-based tracking by deleting cookies from their computers or setting their browsers not to accept cookies. But few do, and privacy advocates say it is easy for companies to add cookies without users noticing.

For decades, data companies like Experian and Acxiom have compiled reams of information on every American: Acxiom estimates it has 1,500 pieces of data on every American, based on information from warranty cards, bridal and birth registries, magazine subscriptions, public records and even dog registrations with the American Kennel Club.

Patrick Williams, the publisher of the personal finance magazine Worth, recently asked Acxiom to find the names and addresses of 10,000 Americans from each of 11 cities who had houses worth more than $1 million, net worth of over $2 million, lived within a few miles of other rich people and subscribed to business publications.

“They are the scariest data research company around — they know far too much,” said Mr. Williams, who said he was very happy with the amount of information it gave him.

Source : New York Times :: Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal

Typically a Datran’s, a competitor to Acxiom, cookie can hold 50 to a 100 pieces of information and while these companies claim the data is all anonymous many privacy advocates are concerned by the amount being collected.

Paul M. Schwartz, a law professor and privacy expert at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, said the unwitting participation by consumers makes online marketing different from offline.

“Interactive media really gets into this creepy Orwellian thing, where it’s a record of our thoughts on the way to decision-making,” he said. “We’re like the data-input clerks now for the industry.”

Source : New York Times :: Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal

Advertisers: Don’t mind us as we follow you everywhere is a post from: The Inquisitr

I am sure that this news will be giving a bunch of browser competitors a climax to their eternal wet dream of Microsoft being brought to its knees but in the end I don’t think it will make a huge difference in what browsers end up being used in Europe. The news that Microsoft has capitulated to the demand by European Union regulators by offering up a ballot type dialog screen so they can select the browser they want installed is all over the web but I’ll bet it won’t do one bit of good for Opera.

While it may have been because of Opera’s whining and sniveling over their lack of market share; which they blame Microsoft for, that prompted this latest round of Microsoft wallet diving by the EU the fact that Microsoft gave in may be more economic than anything else. As Matt Rosoff an analyst with Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland, Washington, pointed out

“Microsoft is basically capitulating,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Kirkland, Washington-based Directions on Microsoft. “Microsoft was able to absorb fines and be more aggressive with their legal strategy when business was good, but when you’re looking at ongoing fines in a downturn, it makes more sense to settle.”

Source: Bloomberg :: Microsoft Offers to Add Rival Browsers to Settle Case (Update3)

Now in the Bloomberg post the lawyer for Opera; Thomas Vinje, had this to say about the move by Microsoft

…. called Microsoft’s offer a “dramatic reversal.” He said without a settlement Microsoft likely would have faced a large fine and still been forced to adopt the ballot screen.

Hmm .. let’s see, Opera’s current market share: 0.7 percent. I sincerely doubt that all this crap caused by them is going to do anything to bring them up to; or pass, the 1% share of the browser market. So ya I guess all this whining is really going to help Opera out of the basement.

Now Firefox as of May had 22.5 percent and even Safari was up there with 8.4 percent of the browser market. Both of those browsers along with Google’s Chrome have more than proven that Microsoft can be beaten when you actually have a product people want.

Opera on the other hand has done nothing more than wasted everyone’s time for what?

Nothing is what.

Microsoft fearing yet another EU bite of its wallet gives in is a post from: The Inquisitr

We live in an online world where everything is suppose to be free (thanks for that Mr. Anderson) regardless of the number of hours someone has  put into what they are making available via the web. Whether it be something as simple as a blog post or as involved as writing a plugin for Firefox everyone wants it for free.

There is no denying that Firefox would be as popular today without the incredibly rich add-on developer community that has made the browser the potential Internet Explorer killer it is. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen people write about how important the Firefox add-ons are. So much so that there has been an on-going discussion among developers about how they can monetize their work, because trust me there is a lot of time and effort that goes into creating and maintaining these add-ons.

Well Mozilla obviously has been listening to these conversations and as a result have introduced a pilot program to make a little spare change for their efforts. At this point the pilot program is only including a selected number of developers but if it proves successful they will open it up to all. For those that are involved in the program you will see the following when you go to the add-on’s page

But here’s the thing – not everyone is willing to pay anything for even the most popular add-ons if the poll being run by cnet is any indication. In fact right now more that 50% of the people who have responded to the poll say that they would never pay for a browser add-on.

As someone who has spent over a hundred dollars in the last couple of weeks for something as simple as themes; which it ends up I won’t be using for various reasons, the idea that people aren’t even willing to chip in something like $5 for a Firefox add-on they just can’t live without says only one thing – you’re a bunch of cheap pricks.

Over 50% of Firefox users are cheap pricks is a post from: The Inquisitr

There were, and still are, a lot of naysayers about Microsoft’s recent reworking of its search offering and subsequent launch of Bing. Its impact on the whole search business was never expected to be earth shattering but it has surprised more than a few by gaining percentage points. One can’t be sure if it will continue to grow or not but it showed that the company can indeed shake things up.

As I was reading a post on Technologizer by Harry McCracken about the slipping of Internet Explorer’s market share it got me thinking about the same thing I had written about in the past when it came to search. In a post on my home blog back in January 2007 where I suggested that if Microsoft wanted to make headway in search it was time they started a search skunkworks project.

The idea was of putting together a very small core group of developers and keep the marketing department as far away as possible in the hopes that they could build something new and fresh. While they didn’t go that route with Bing they came pretty close and I think that they should do exactly the same thing when it comes to Internet Explorer.

End of the line

In effect I would suggest that IE8 should be the last Internet Explorer. Any browser from Microsoft that comes after should be a completely new beast with a new name, a whole new frame of mind. I say this because the Internet Explorer name has way too much negative ‘emotional’ baggage that is being carted along version to version. The only reason that IE has any placement on the desktop anymore is because it comes with the operating system.

Other than those wanting to test out each new version so they can write negative posts about it, or diehard IE users looking to upgrade. Hell I was a diehard IE user for years. Sure, I tried out Firefox (never have liked it), Opera, Safari and Chrome. It is the last one that finally got me away from IE and chances are I won’t go back; and I’m not alone. As McCracken points out in his post

But I assume that Microsoft would prefer to not only stop the bleeding but to get IE growing again. The only way that’ll happen is if users of other Windows browsers–Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari–switch to IE in measurable quantities.

What are the chances of that happening? Slim, I think. For Windows users, running anything other than IE represents a conscious decision to use a browser other than the default one their OS came with. Typical users of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari-for-Windows users all seem to be dedicated fans of their browser of choice. And once you’ve found a browser you’re comfortable with, the incentive to stick with it is high. For all these reasons, any version of IE is going to need to be strikingly different and better to lure expatriates back.

Why a skunkworks project?

One of the biggest problems that Microsoft has created for itself is that because of the ingrained nature of Windows and IE their software has to be backward compatible to the point that it becomes a bloated mess of code. If they were to start fresh it would have to be with the internal understanding that this is a complete fresh start – no dragging any code from IE forward. If they were to do this and word got out I think you would see a lot of corporate businesses become worried because of the in-house investment they have in using IE.

This in turn could exert pressure on Microsoft to re-consider and that would kill any chance of a fresh start. Make no mistake Microsoft has to do something when it comes to a browser. Internet Explorer is becoming an albatross around their neck and will continue to lose ground in the browser world.

So any initial work on a new browser would have to be done very quietly. There are a lot of people who would question whether or not Microsoft could do something like this on the quiet but just look at Windows 7 and Bing to see that they can do it. We might have known Windows 7 was coming but unlike previous versions of the operating system next to nothing was known about it until Sinofsky said so. We might have been hearing something about Kumo, the codename for Bing, but we didn’t find out much about it until they were ready.

Time to send Trident to the bottom of the ocean

Now assuming for the sake of discussion Microsoft did decide to take the plunge and work on a completely new browser. The first thing I would suggest doing is to ditch the Trident rendering engine at least as far as the browser is concerned. They have been using Trident for as long as there has been an IE but I would strongly suggest that they switch to using WebKit as the basis for the browser.

I suggest this for a couple of reasons. As I wrote previously one of these reasons is

If you consider that by moving to the WebKit engine Microsoft would be giving an incredible boost to an open source product as well the number of developers that would begin getting involved in making the engine better is huge. Consider that in this case WebKit would now be the default rendering engine being used in IE, Safari and Chrome – that means a shitload of developers are now available to improve the common engine. It would also leave Firefox out on its own and with it’s mortal enemy IE able to claim open source and compliance rights thereby taking away the major arguing point Firefox has for getting new users.

The effects of this kind of move would be a big public relations plus for the company. Microsoft has already been making moves to be a part of the open source movement but this would be a big step forward that would get a lot of people talking.

And that is one oft he other reasons why a move to using WebKit would be a key idea. The buzz that would surround the company as they launched a totally new browser based on the same open standards as two other major browsers would be immense. McCracken asked in his post what it would take for people to move to a Microsoft browser and stem the flow of people moving to other browsers as well as bring in new users. Well I think some thing like this would definitely fit the bill as an answer to his question.

Wrapping up

Internet Explorer (any version) is a pig with a lot of bad press surrounding it and I don’t believe that IE 8 or any future version of Internet Explorer will do anything to change that perception. I realize that any chance of anything I have suggested coming to fruition is probably never going to happen. It is also obvious that the company is losing market share in the browser world and that is something it can’t afford to let happen. Unfortunately I just don’t see Internet Explorer, now and the road forward, ever being able to turn things around.

First Microsoft shook up its search – next up: Internet Explorer is a post from: The Inquisitr

I have to give big props to the guys over at TheNextWeb.com for finding this gem of a video – oh and the headline it’s actually from the video and their answer wasn’t Google Chrome. It was just – Google.

While the Zee might have been surprised by some of the answers from the people on the street I’m not. the fact that the majority of people thought Google, Yahoo were browsers doesn’t surprise me one bit. Heck there was even one diehard “AOL is the web” guy. Rather than spoil it any further take the 2 – 3 minutes it takes and watch the video. It’s a great way to end a Friday.

Q: What browser do you use? – A: Google [VIDEO] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Feel like goofing off for an hour or so and play some good old fashioned blood and guts first person shooting?

Then I may have just found the perfect playground for you to fire up in your browser and relive some original Doom glory. Not only that but you can also switch over to two other classics from the iD collection – Heretic and Hexen. Doom may have gotten most of the press back in the day but both Hexen and Heretic are just as good.

This goodness is brought to you by Newgrounds and is totally playable within your browser of choice. The only caveat being you will need Flash 10 installed.

Relive classic gaming in your browser for free is a post from: The Inquisitr

At some point this had to happen – browser plug-ins with opposite agendas coming into some sort of conflict. Such is the case of the recent updating of the well known NoScript plug-in and the equally well known Adblock Plus plug-in, both for the Firefox browser.

The simmering war of words has been most apparent on the Adblock Plus blog where Wladimir Palant, the author of the plug-in, keeps in touch with the users of the plug-in (I was unable to find a blog for NoScript). It was a recent post that Wladimir first talked about the problem that a lot of plug-in authors face, especially if their work becomes popular as is the case with his; and the NoScript, plug-in has. It is a problem of time versus earning a living.

Many of the most well known plug-ins are still a labor of love with their authors doing all the work in their spare time. The problem is that once you cross the line from being just one of the many available plug-ins to being one of the plug-ins that devoted fans of browsers like Firefox install by default. It is these plug-ins that require more and more of the author’s time. Time that some authors are trying to find ways to get paid for.

In his post Wladimir made it quite obvious that he understands why some authors may go the monetization route but what worried him was the methods that would be used.

So far, getting money for your work ranges from begging for donations over post-install pages with ads (where some go pretty far to make sure these ads are seen) to showing ads in the extension itself. Now I am afraid that we might see another development that we already know from desktop applications: extensions that change your homepage/default search engine or install unrelated extensions if you aren’t careful enough to opt-out.

It wasn’t long after that post that he found himself having to deal with a competing plug-in that in order to monetize itself was making modification to his plug-in, Adblock Plus. From today’s post on the escalating war of words

What followed was a small war — the website would add various tricks to prevent Adblock Plus with EasyList from blocking ads, EasyList kept adjusting filters. Then, a week ago a new NoScript version was released. A few days later I noticed first bug reports — apparently, Adblock Plus “glitches” were observed with this NoScript version, especially around NoScript’s domains (but not only those). When I investigated this issue I couldn’t believe my eyes. NoScript was extended by a piece of obfuscated (!) code to specifically target Adblock Plus and disable parts of its functionality. The issues caused by this manipulation were declared as “compatibility issues” in the NoScript forum, even now I still didn’t see any official admission of crippling Adblock Plus. Clearly, NoScript is moving from the gray area of adware into dark black area of scareware, making money at user’s expense at any cost.

Now Wladimir has added an update to that post letting everyone know that this current battle has been won in that NoScript, through some pushing from the people responsible for the Mozilla Add-ons Policy, has had to stop modifying the Adblock Plus subscription filter. How long this quiet period will last is anyone’s guess but it belies a larger problem in the plug-in landscape; which Wladimir talked about – how do popular plug-in authors justify their time spent on these often complex pieces of code?

There are literally thousands of plug-ins available for just Firefox alone, often doing similar jobs and vying for user attention. Trying to set oneself apart from the pack is a difficult proposition even without having to consider if you want to make any kind of money from your work. Granted a large majority of plug-in authors are firm believers of the Open Source and GPL licensing model; but when you get to the level of popularity experienced by plug-ins like Adblock Plus and NoScript it can be harder to justify all the time spent on the project.

Throw in the fact that many of the users of one plug-in are going to be users of a similar; and to a degree competing, plug-in things might get a little nasty. This might only be one little skirmish but is is also a window onto a larger problem that the plug-in authors may be facing more and more as the popularity of plug-ins increases across the board. At some point people are going to want to find some way to be compensated for their time and warm and fuzzy words of encouragement aren’t going to be enough.

I expect we will see more things like this recent war of words happen more and more on the road forward.

The war of browser plug-ins is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve been stewing over this bucketful of crap about the European Union wanting to give Microsoft the good old underhanded grab because Opera is whining about how it can’t get any market share away from Microsoft because of Internet Explorer being shipped as part of the Windows OS. Then Mozilla decides that ya that sounds like a great idea and jumps on the EU bandwagon like a bunch of whiney little brats. Now today Google decides is doesn’t want to be left out of any parties so it petitions to join in on the anti-trust case.

Sorry but the whole argument that Microsoft has a monopoly on the browser market because it ships IE with Windows is nothing short of bullshit – plain and simple. The idea behind a monopoly is that Company ‘A’ has a complete stranglehold on a segment of the market that not a single competitor has a chance to gain customers away from them.

Well excuse me all to hell but perhaps nobody is paying attention to the numbers in this lala-land but tell me the name of the one company that has been losing browser market share over the past year.

C’mon .. it’s not hard. Hell just Google for it and the numbers are there for those that aren’t frikken blind.

The only company to see its numbers go down; and no Opera you don’t count anymore, is Microsoft. Mozilla’s Firefox has continually climbed with numbers of  anywhere between 20% to 30% being commonly tossed around. Even Google’s Chrome in its short life has been taking away users from Internet Explorer so what the hell do they have to bitch about. Then we have Apple’s Safari browser which is also showing strong gains, and speaking of Safari if the big whine point everyone has against Microsoft is that they ship their own browser with their own operating system how come Apple is getting a pass?

The fact is that the browser market is one of the strongest ones out there as far as software is concerned. All the players – the serious ones anyway – hard pushing hard and producing great products. Firefox continues to grow but is facing some stiff competition from both Google and Apple. As far as I am concerned this whole EU nonsense is nothing more than them trying to return to the Microsoft ATM to see if they can grab a few more billion and Microsoft’s competitors are only to willing to tag along.

The EU, Google, Mozilla and especially Opera are a bunch of asshats is a post from: The Inquisitr

I can’t believe we are still dealing with this non-issue of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system, let alone looking to the European Union (EU) to give the company another slap for antitrust violations in the matter. On top of that Mozilla has come out on the same side as the EU regulators complaining about Microsoft’s actions. It’s not like past action of the EU regulators made any difference when they force Microsoft to sell a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player bundled with the OS. In fact European OEMs gave Windows N the cold shoulder because no-one wanted the stripped down version. Do we really think that an IE less version of Windows will fair any better?

As far as the monopoly angle that everyone is whining about I think felix over at #comments has the right idea when he said the following in a post today

But that’s not what this law suit is about. It’s about Microsoft’s monopoly. Really? Come on. Are we still on this crap? Microsoft’s browser share has been falling steadily for years – this is non-trivial stuff. Their share is being steadily and meaningfully eroded. It’s not a monopoly anymore. There’s competition. Look Opera, I know you have a cult following, but people just don’t want your browser. Firefox is moving up the charts, so it can obviously be done. Why does the law need to be brought into this?

The fact is that if Microsoft hadn’t been the dominant browser they way it had we might not even have Firefox because it only came about because people were pissed with Internet Explorer. If anything the dominance of IE has spurred browser development as we have Google Chrome slowly making its way up the popularity tree and along with it and Firefox Apple’s Safari has seen a growth in users since it came out with a Windows version. this was the point that Michael Masnick at Techdirt tried to make in his post on this today

Last month, it seemed silly that EU regulators were pursuing Microsoft for antitrust violations in the browser market for bundling IE. It was clear that some of the initial complaints had come from Opera — an also-ran in the browser market. However, it seemed silly because there is vibrant and growing competition in the marketplace. Firefox has continued to grow its market share, and in the past few years we’ve seen new entrants in the browser market from Apple and Google — both of whom have established small, but significant footholds.

So tell me – where the hell is the monopoly?

Personally I think Internet Explorer is still a pile of crap – IE8 is better but compared to the other browsers it is a bloated trojan attracting website breaking pile of crap, and this comes from some-one who has been a faithful IE user for years. Now however I have switched over to Chrome and haven’t looked back since. And I am not alone as looking at the browser market share numbers will tell you – IE is losing its dominate position slowly but surely.

I still hold out hope for the venerable browser though but I also believe that Microsoft needs to start over from scratch. Take their best minds and coders that deal with the web – lock them in a room and restart their browser effort. Key principals should be – extremely light footprint, extensible but without those stupid and dangerous Browser Object Add-ons and finally be totally web compliant – not Microsoft’s version but real compliance.

But this stupidity of Mozilla joining the appeal to the EU for action against Microsoft give me a break. all it is doing is making Mozilla look like a bunch of whiners.

Mozilla should be thanking Microsoft for bundling IE not kissing EU’s butt is a post from: The Inquisitr

First, the new release: Chrome version 0.3.154.9 is expected to go out to users automatically within the “next few days,” according to a blog posted last night. It implements a substantial security fix, as well as improved Flash and Silverlight performance, touchpad scrolling support, and some changes to the interface.

Now, the counterintuitive effect: Chrome seems, at this point, to be helping the other browsers on the market. After its initial draw, recent reports show Chrome’s numbers dropping and the number of users on other browsers climbing. Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner sees it as a direct effect. In an interview with GigaOM published today, von Tetzchner said the publicity surrounded Chrome essentially gave him free exposure to an audience who didn’t know his product existed.

“The effect of Chrome so far has been 20 percent more downloads every day,” he told GigaOM. “It’s fairly logical when you think about it, because the biggest hurdle we have is all those people that don’t realize there’s an alternative in the market. Now, with the launch of Chrome there’s focus on the choice of browsers in the market.”

So what’s in the cards for Chrome’s future? Our Inquisitr poll last month asked you what you thought.

• 39 percent of you believe Chrome will stick around and carve out its share of the market.
• 29 percent said it will stick around but never see widespread success.
• 32 percent said it will eventually fade into Google Lab oblivion.

To be fair, Google’s first foray into the browser world is still in beta, so we may be jumping to early judgments on its ultimate success. Then again, Gmail’s still in beta, too, and it’s doing just fine. Chrome came into a market with several popular and relatively advanced browsers, so finding a sizable userbase willing to abandon Firefox, Safari, or Opera may prove extra challenging for Google. So far, though, the team is showing no signs of giving up yet. Let’s see if their efforts pay off, or if — as a third of you predicted — Chrome vanishes into the final resting spot of so many Google projects past.

Chrome Releases Third Beta — Competitors Excited? is a post from: The Inquisitr