Wary of the looming presence of Google Chrome and Apple Safari, Mozilla has released the first beta of its Firefox 4.0 web browser. The candidate build surfaced at the end of June, but the company has now formally rolled out Firefox 4 Beta 1 for testers.

From the sounds of it, Firefox 4 won’t just be a minor clean-up operation either, Mozilla seems determined not to shed users Explorer-style. In turn, the new significant features included in the Firefox 4.0 beta will be: Continue Reading

In the US, analysis by web-tracking specialists StatCounter has found that Google’s Chrome has just passed Apple’s Safari as the third most popular browser across the Atlantic, while it is also continues to gain ground globally.

The gigantic survey of 874 million page views, spanning three million websites from 21-27 June showed that Chrome picked up 8.97% of the page views, while Safari garnered slightly less on 8.88%. Both numbers are dwarfed by the two main players in the US market at present though, with StatCounter estimating that 52% of page views were through Internet Explorer with Firefox on 28.5%.

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Late last night, Apple released the latest version of its Safari web-browser, making some fairly interesting changes to the browser and speeding the whole affair up by 30%.

Safari 5's Reader is an interesting piece of kit...

Safari 5 had been one of the releases that had been rumoured Steve Jobs might unveil during the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote speech yesterday evening, but instead the browser went unmentioned at WWDC and was released shortly afterwards. Perhaps most interesting about this release of Safari is that it contains both a few steps forward and at least one noticeable step back.

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Google’s vice president, Sundar Pichai has confirmed that we’ll see an official release for Chrome OS before the end of this year, saying that we can expect to see it release in the fourth quarter of this year.

There had been doubts expressed about just when we’d see Google’s upcoming, browser-focussed operating system launched, because of the lack of official word from Google on the release. Now though, it seems that Google has taken time at Computex[http://www.computex.biz/Computex2010_en/TopNews_Detail.aspx?index=34236] to talk about its web based OS and confirmed that we’ll see devices running Chrome OS by the end of this year, which falls into line with what Acer had been saying with regards to its Chrome OS-based devices.

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Prompting somewhat hysterical headlines such as ‘Internet Explorer 6 finally nearing extinction’, the news that IE is now the favoured OS of less than six out of ten web users is causing some ripples of excitement in newsland.

The Net Applications numbers.

According to the latest data on browser usage trends from web analytics firm Net Applications, between April and May Internet Explorer dropped 0.26 percentage points overall, from 59.95% to 59.69%, while in comparison, Chrome was up 0.32 percentage points from 6.73% to 7.05%.

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Google employees will have to phase out any usage of Microsoft Windows due to security concerns. The FT quotes “several Google employees” as saying that there is a company directive to move to other operating systems and indeed the migration away from Windows has apparently been happening since January.

Shiny, happy Google offices, don’t get caught using Windows in there though.

That came after Google’s Chinese operations were hacked, and could effectively end the use of Windows at Google, which employs more than 10,000 workers internationally. “We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said one Google employee. Another employee added, “Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks.” Continue Reading

Google has announced that it will launch what it’s calling the Chrome Web Store as a place for developers to showcase their various web-based applications.

The potential tie in certainly makes Chrome OS that bit more appealing

The idea of a web apps store is an interesting one, given that so very many web-based applications are either free or have free counterparts undercutting them. It’ll be interesting to see if Google app store style arrangement can tempt people into paying for web-based services they might not normally have considered. TechCrunch reports that, for the moment at least, Google says the store isn’t quite ready to be shown off, but there are still some very interesting questions raised by the idea of a Chrome Web Store.

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Acer has issued a statement to the effect that it will not be showing off a Chrome OS netbook this June.

Acer's Chrome OS netbook won't be making an appearance for some time so...

This comes despite unusually widely reported rumours that the company had been gearing up to show off the first netbook to be running Google’s upcoming web-centric operating system, Chrome OS, next month. Instead, Acer has issued a statement to the effect that the whole business was just a rumour that’s been picked up and reported on with unusual fervour. The official word from the folks at Acer is that,

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Acer is set to launch its first Chrome OS devices this June at the Computex showcase in Taipei, VentureBeat picked up the news though its report does add that there’s no info out there at the minute as to what devices Acer will actually be launching at the event.

As VB notes, “Chrome OS is designed for netbooks, but Google has also mentioned the possibility of bringing it to other device types like smartbooks and tablets running ARM processors. Smartbooks look like netbooks but run processors like those from ARM which are designed for mobile devices.” Continue Reading

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser has hit a low point, dropping below 60% of the browser market, at least according to one reckoning.

Curious to see IE falling, but IE9 could reverse that trend

According to NetMarketshare, the total figure for all versions of Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer, ended this month at 59.95%. While that puts Internet Explorer far ahead of the competition, the fact is that it’s still a fairly worrying figure for the folks at Microsoft, given that in May of 2008 Internet Explorer was sitting pretty at 75.94%, again, according to NetMarketshare’s figures, there’s been a gradual slide for IE that’s seen only the occasional bump upwards over the last two years.

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Google has acquired UI specialists from the folks over at 3D desktop replacement Bumptop.

Invariably, 3D desktops end up as messy as 2D ones...

Word of the acquisition comes from Bumptop itself, which has posted a notice to its users to outline the fact that it’s been bought by Google, as well as to offer a free version of its application for the rest of this week to encourage anyone who had until now been hesitant to download the application. According to the folks at Bumptop, the fact that the company has been acquired by Google means that it will no longer be updating its existing apps, and that its existing applications will no longer be available for sale.

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It seems that Google’s upcoming lightweight OS, specifically designed with netbooks in mind, won’t be as much of a saver as many had suggested, with word that Chrome OS netbooks will likely cost somewhere between $300 and $400.

If nothing else, Chrome OS looks nice, and that's what's most important, right?

That figure might not be too startling for anyone who’s already familiar with the netbook market, given that it’s quite near the current netbook prices for devices running Microsoft’s Windows. Still, a big part of the draw for Chrome OS was that there wouldn’t be any charges for OEMs looking to install Google’s OS on their netbooks, meaning that the big expectation was that Chrome OS-powered netbooks would weigh in that bit cheaper than their Windows equivalents.

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