While Google’s Chrome web browser has seen substantial gains in worldwide market share in the past few years, Internet Explorer still holds a steady lead in workplace usage, according to a new Forrester report.

Internet Explorer is often the default option on workplace PCs, but due to different device types infiltrating the enterprise, its influence has shrunk. Smartphones, tablets, and Mac computers are now common among enterprise employees and some employees simply ignore the default and install other browsers if they can.

Forrester research indicates Microsoft Internet Explorer holds 40.2 percent of market share, Google Chrome has 27.8 percent, and Mozilla Firefox has 25.4 percent. Apple’s Safari browser came in a distant fourth with 1.8 percent. Take a look at the breakdown below.

Forrester admits that there are many data sources to pull browser share from, including StatCounter and NetMarketShare. Still, no matter which source you use, browser diversity still stands.

“Whichever data source we use, the overall picture painted for I&O professionals comes out the same: Today, even when IT departments standardize around a particular browser brand and version, browser diversity is quite common in the enterprise,” Forrester VP and Infrastructure & Operations analyst J.P. Gownder writes in the report. “For I&O professionals, the bottom line is that standardizing around one browser version doesn’t mean that your company won’t see a variety of browser types and versions. With BYO and information workers’ use of tablets and smartphones on the rise, this era of diversity only stands to grow richer in the near future.”

Operating system share: Windows 7 takes heavy lead in the enterprise

Forrester’s report also shows that Windows 7 has taken a strong lead in the enterprise in terms of operating system market share. Windows 7 now has a 47.5 percent penetration rate, while XP holds on to 38.2 percent. But XP’s numbers will likely drop quickly in 2014 when Microsoft stops issuing security updates for it. The Windows Vista penetration has dropped to just 3.5 percent.

“We can safely call Windows 7 the new enterprise standard, particularly since Microsoft will end support for Windows XP in 2014,” Gownder writes. “But Windows 7 hasn’t reached the ubiquity of XP, which once was installed on over 80% of enterprise desktop devices. However, it bears noting that Windows XP took five years to reach its peak, while Windows 7 has only been present in the market for three and a half years.”

Mac usage has grown as more companies support BYOD. Today, 7.2 percent of IT decision makers in North America and Europe say they support Macs.

Take a look at the full breakdown below.

Illustration by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Mozilla has released a new build of its web browser that conforms to the design of a true Windows 8 app, a sign that a full release could be coming soon.

Microsoft’s newest OS uses two different kinds of apps — desktop apps (the ones we’ve been using forever) and new Windows 8-style (formerly “Metro”) apps. These Windows 8 apps take up the entire screen and emphasize a more minimal and touch-friendly interface. They’re sort of like using apps on an iPad or Android tablet, except Windows 8 apps work with a mouse and physical keyboard as well as touch.

Mozilla has been promising a Windows 8-style browser for a long while. It releases “nightly builds” of its Firefox browser so developers (and curious geeks) can test unfinished versions, so it has used one of its latest builds to add functionality of Windows 8. It’s given no indication when it will release the updated app officially just yet, but this is a good sign.

Google’s Chrome browser already has a Windows 8 counterpart, and it’s actually quite nice.

Via The Verge.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Next up from the web browser maker Opera: A new browser that aims to take full advantage of mobile and give the company a significant foothold on iOS and Android.

It’s called Opera Ice, and it could end up being one of the most significant moves the company has ever made. Opera was initially planning to announce the mobile-focused browser next month at Mobile World Congress, but the crafty folks at Pocket-lint has nabbed an internal video demonstration that lays out all of the details.

Opera Ice will do away with most of what we expect to see in mobile browsers: There aren’t any buttons, menus, or even tabs. Instead, the entire interface will rely on touch gestures.

“This is a full touch and tablet-focused browser,” said an Opera product manager in the video. “Most are taking a PC browser and squishing [it] into a tablet, or they are taking a mobile browser and blowing it up to fill the space.”

Instead of relying on Opera’s Presto engine, which powers Opera Mini and Mobile, Opera Ice will use the WebKit framework (currently used by Apple and Google for all versions of their browsers). Opera Mini relied on the Presto Engine, but also pushed web pages through the company’s servers to optimize them for mobile devices. With Opera Ice, the company is finally focusing on delivering a pure mobile browsing experience to take on mobile Safari and Chrome on Android.

The company isn’t giving up on Opera Mini, but it seems clear that Opera Ice will be its new focus for smartphones and tablets. Opera chief executive Lars Boilesen noted that Mini is still important, but it’s not a “fully-fledged offering” like competitor mobile browsers since it still doesn’t work properly with many websites.

Opera Ice will be released on iOS and Android in February, and the company also plans to release an updated desktop browser in March.

The European Union could soon show Microsoft how serious it is about web browser choice.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Thursday that the organization could press formal charges against Microsoft over the company’s alleged anticompetitive behaviors, Reuters reports.

As part of a 2009 settlement with the EU, Microsoft was supposed to give Windows users a clear choice between its own Internet Explorer browser and competing products. Microsoft followed through on the agreement up until the release of Windows 7 service Pack 1, which did not feature the screen.

Microsoft’s defense? It was a “technical error.”

Engineering mishap or not, the broken promise could cost Microsoft up to $7.4 billion, which is roughly 10 percent of its revenues from last year.

All of this comes as the Google’s Chrome browser siphons away at Internet Explorer’s market share. As of August, Internet Explorer commanded 33.85 percent of the browser market, slightly lower than Chrome’s 33.59 percent share, according to StatCounter.

But while Google is winning the browser wars, it could be the next target of the EU, which says that the search giant also engaged in noncompetitive behaviors with its search engine results.

Photo:Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The popular Dolphin web browser for Android and iOS devices has opened its API to help third-party developers create better add-ons, the company announced today.

Dolphin Browser has been downloaded more than 16 million times across Android and iOS devices, and it wants to continue its lead as the top third-party browser for mobile. Dolphin developer MoboTap said its new “Dolphin Garage” initiative will give developers access to more than 150 internal APIs so they can do all kinds of crazy things with browser UI, interactions, and more.

“Dolphin Browser already contains 50 plus add-ons that have been installed over 14 million times,” said MoboTap CEO Yongzhi Yang, in a statement. “Dolphin Garage empowers even more developers to build any add-on or PhoneGap-based web app they want and allows more Dolphin users to discover their app.”

Dolphin also announced the addition of four new add-ons from Dropbox, Evernote, Pocket, and Wikipedia that expand what you can do with the wide-ranging mobile browser. The company writes of its new third-party add-ons:

Powered by Dolphin Garage, users can now seamlessly experience the following on Dolphin:

• Dropbox: allows users to download anything and everything directly to Dropbox from within Dolphin.
• Evernote: helps users grab any Web content from Dolphin and save it to Evernote.
• Pocket: allows users to save any page with one click from within Dolphin, then view later on any device, anywhere.
• Wikipedia: powered by PhoneGap, allows users to search Wikipedia from Dolphin and open 20 million Wiki articles in 280 languages, without needing to install a native app.

San Francisco-based MoboTap has raised $10 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google has released its first attempt at making its popular Chrome browser work with Windows 8′s Metro-style design aesthetic, and because the app ignores some of Microsoft’s Metro mandates, it’s actually quite good.

A few months back, we heard that both Google and Mozilla would release a version of their popular Chrome and Firefox browsers targeting Windows 8. Both companies rightly should, considering that if they don’t get on the ball, they could potentially not have their browser tested and ready to go on Windows 8′s release day (whenever that is).

To get access to Metro-style Chrome on Windows 8, you have to subscribe to the Chrome Dev channel for Windows and download the latest version (21.0.1171.0). Once you have Chrome as your default browser and pinned to the Win 8 Start screen, you’re good to go.

I downloaded Metro-style Chrome, and I love that it’s a far cry from Internet Explorer 10, the default browser in Windows 8. Whereas IE10 feels way different from IE9, this version of Chrome ignores some of the Metro design ideas that Microsoft has been pushing. When you right-click or press “Windows key + Z,” there should be an App bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen. Google, being Google, has instead opted to put a more traditional menu bar in the top right corner that you can click for settings and app changes. There’s also standard tabbed browsing that works smoothly.

However, like IE10, Chrome includes Flash Player built into the browser for viewing all kinds of Flash content. But here it differs slightly too, because IE10 uses an approved list of sites and Flash content, where Chrome displays everything.

One of my biggest problems with Windows 8 and Metro apps is how much it’s forcing me to change from my established habits for work and play. But Chrome works great here because it falls between old and new instead of just being NEW.

You can check out more screens of Metro-style Chrome in Windows 8 below:

Microsoft is certainly doing a good job of painting itself as a consumer advocate in regards to the new “Do Not Track” browser option, but its unyielding stance might be doing more harm than good.

The DNT feature allows people to stop websites from having their personal information tracked and collected for ad targeting/marketing purposes. Not only has Microsoft come out in support of DNT, but it’s also making it the default option for people using its Internet Explorer 10 browser, as VentureBeat previously reported.

The move didn’t exactly sit well with advertising industry groups, because it will likely translate into less effective advertising and lower revenue. And let’s be honest, the majority of people won’t go out of their way to let advertisers track and catalog their personal data.

Now, a handful of highly influential privacy advocates — including Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Peter Eckersley, Mozilla’s Tom Lowenthal, and Stanford University professor Jonathan Mayer — are voicing disagreement with Microsoft’s decision over the DNT default setting. The privacy advocates are charged with overseeing a “Do Not Track Compromise” (PDF) proposal for the W3C, the organization charged with issuing official web standards. Yesterday, that proposal, which is endorsed by the FTC, was updated to reflect the sentiments of the advertising community.

While noting that the changes haven’t been reviewed by committee, the group did explain the proposal’s update in a conference call, saying:

Today we reaffirmed the group consensus that a user agent MUST NOT set a default of DNT:1 or DNT:0, unless the act of selecting that user agent is itself a choice that expresses the user’s preference for privacy. In all cases, a DNT signal MUST be an expression of a user’s preference.

Microsoft IE, as a general purpose user agent, will not be able to claim compliance with DNT once we have a published W3C Recommendation. As a practical matter they can continue their current default settings, since DNT is a voluntary standard in the first place. But if they claim to comply with the W3C Recommendation and do not, that is a matter the FTC (and others) can enforce.

Avoiding Do Not Track legislation

The ad industry’s compliance with DNT standards is basically to avoid having the Federal Trade Commission call for legislation regarding online data tracking. If you’ve paid attention to U.S. legislators’ attempts to pass laws for the web, you’ll understand they aren’t very good at it. (If you’d like proof, check out our coverage of SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA.) The best-case scenario for online privacy tracking regulation would be for everyone (advertisers, websites, and browsers) to work together on a comprehensive set of standards that are fair, logical, and able to evolve with behavior and technology trends, without bringing Congress into the mix.

If other browsers (or “user agents”) start following Microsoft’s lead with a default DNT option, it could jeopardize the ad industry’s willingness to work towards online tracking standards that aren’t mandated by a new law. In other words, it could slow the “Do Not Track” movement to a crawl.

Microsoft, however, is staying firm on its decision to keep DNT as a default. And for that, it gains some approval from tech-savvy web users who don’t want to be tracked, and probably also improves its standing next to ad-revenue-dependent rival Google.

“We are engaged with the W3C, as we are with many international standards bodies. While we respect the W3C’s perspective, we believe that a standard should support a privacy by default choice for consumers,” Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch said in a statement to VentureBeat.

The biggest disadvantage of Microsoft’s stance on DNT is that Internet Explorer, which accounts for about a fifth of all browser usage, will no longer be able to claim compliance with W3C standards. That means, theoretically, advertisers can simply ignore IE10′s attempt to stop data from being tracked. That could lead to Microsoft or its users employing more powerful DNT methods.

Many people criticize popular ways to stop advertisers and others from tracking your web activity, such as those used by NoScript and AdBlock Plus. But without a universal standard, these tools are pretty much your only option today.

IE10′s impact on advertising

At the same time, Microsoft’s decision might not have a big enough impact to matter, according to StrangeLoop president Joshua Bixby, whose firm helps companies understand browser usage trends to boost revenue. In fact, there might even be an incentive for companies to allow IE10 to work as intended.

“Microsoft isn’t going to really disrupt things by keeping (DNT) default in IE,” Bixby told VentureBeat. He explained Internet Explorer usage is higher, and therefore more crucial, among online consumers when looking at the individual companies he’s worked with.

But the number of people who will upgrade to IE10 (the only version of the web browser that will feature the default DNT option) probably won’t be large enough to seriously hurt revenue, he said. This is also true because, for the DNT functionality to work, websites need to comply with a set of standards. It’s a voluntary effort at this point, so there’s no telling when a large number of big websites will jump on board.

Bixby added that IE10 users who can’t be tracked will provide companies, as well as the analytics firms they work with, “enough time to adapt technologies to create new and more open standards for how to track people.”

Essentially, the absence of user data from IE10 users can serve as a test case for new methods of ad/data tracking. When those methods prove successful, they can be pushed out to other consumers without fear of flying blind. In this sense, Microsoft is unwittingly helping the DNT movement, but that could quickly change if others start offering a default setting to stop advertisers from tracking data.

“Using the Facebook IPO as a watermark, this is the beginning of the ad business needing to change on the Internet,” Bixby said.

Top image via grynold/Shutterstock

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 web browser will include a default “Do Not Track” feature that allows users to stop advertisers from tracking and collecting their personal data while surfing the net, the company announced late yesterday.

Apparently, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz wasn’t exaggerating when he said that the DNT feature would be adopted by a significant number of companies online before the end of the year. The DNT feature built into web browsers allows websites to give their visitors the option of having their personal information tracked and collected for ad targeting and marketing purposes. Twitter is one of the first major websites to support the new feature, with Microsoft saying it’ll make its own sites compatible with DNT soon.

Internet Explorer (all versions), which accounts for more than 18 percent of global browser usage, is the second web browser to adopt the DNT feature. Mozilla’s Firefox has been testing the DNT feature since last year, but users must turn it on through the browser’s preference options. IE10, by contrast, will have the feature turned on by default, as demonstrated in the Windows 8 Release Preview that rolled out yesterday.

“We’ve made today’s decision because we believe in putting people first,” wrote Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch. “We believe that consumers should have more control over how information about their online behavior is tracked, shared, and used.”

Reading between the lines a bit, it’s easy to see that this move will clearly win over some of Microsoft’s customers. And even if its advertising revenue suffers in the long run, Microsoft isn’t a company that’s entirely reliant on its ad business. One of Microsoft’s major competitors, Google, can’t say the same.

However, at least one group is really not happy about Microsoft’s decision. While Lynch noted that Microsoft still sees value in targeted advertising, as well as its importance in the industry to make money for publishers and bring new products to market, having the DNT feature turned on by default in IE10 didn’t sit well with major ad industry group the Digital Advertising Alliance.

In an agreement with the White House back in February (PDF), the DAA agreed to the terms of the FTC’s initial “Do Not Track” guidelines so long as the feature wasn’t made as a default option. DAA General Council Stu Ingis told the Wall Street Journal that Microsoft’s decision “raises a lot of concern,” and that his group supports “consumer choice, not a choice made by one browser or technology vendor.”

Photo via karamish/Shutterstock

In the tech community, everyone has pet stereotypes about different browser users. “Chrome users are nerds.” “IE users are old.” There’s no shortage of theories. What’s lacking is hard data about what these different browser users actually do online: how much they spend, how much more time they spend on site, how many more pages they view.

I’m in the fortunate position of being able to study and (anonymously) report on large amounts of data from a variety of ecommerce sites that my company, Strangeloop Networks, accelerates. In the past few months, I’ve conducted some in-house research to answer these questions.

Finding #1: People using newer browser versions spend more than people using older versions.

You might be saying “Of course, that’s obvious” to this one, but this is the first time I’ve heard this theory substantiated. The difference can be pretty staggering. On one site, I found the order value per visitor was 29% higher for IE8 users than it was for IE7 users. (If you’re using Google Analytics or a similar program to track your customer data, you can easily identify these numbers for your own site.)

Finding #2: IE users view more pages, spend more time on site, and have a lower bounce rate than Firefox and Chrome users.

Earlier this year, I gathered transaction data spanning hundreds of millions of unique visits for five ecommerce sites that Strangeloop is currently accelerating. I extracted data about page views, time on site, and bounce rate, and then sorted that data into the following browser/OS groups: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, iPad, iPhone, and Android (phone).

What I learned:

• IE users viewed about 20% more pages per visit than Firefox and Chrome users.
• IE users spent between 30-45 seconds longer on the site than other users.
• IE users had a bounce rate that was 5 or 6 percentage points lower.

These kinds of numbers easily lead to more theorizing. Are IE fans less tech savvy and therefore slower web users than the rest of us? Are they more likely to be using older systems with less processing power? But what about that lower bounce rate? Does it signify that IE users are better searchers and more likely to arrive at the right destination, or are they simply more easily satisfied than other users? These are questions that numbers can’t answer.

Finding #3: iPhone users view fewer pages, spend less time on site, and have a higher average bounce rate than users of other mobile browsers.

When we extended our study to mobile browsers — focusing on iOS and Android — we found that iPhone users sit at the opposite end of the spectrum from Internet Explorer users. In the same study I described above, we found that iPhone users used ecommerce sites very differently than Android users:

• iPhone users viewed 31% fewer pages than Android users.
• iPhone users spent 28% less time on site than Android users.
• iPhone users had a bounce rate that was 3-4% higher than Android users.

Possible theories? Apple fans might argue that the shorter time spent on site could be due to the (debatable) fact that iPhones are better-powered than other devices, but that doesn’t account for the differences in page views and bounce rate. Do these validate the stereotypes about iPhone users: that they’re impatient and will bounce from a site if they can’t find what they want right away? Or that they’re savvier than Android and can complete transactions faster?

Conclusions

If you’re a site owner, this kind of data should be of interest to you. But it’s not enough to learn that, for example, your Chrome-using customers spend 10% more than your Firefox users. Your next step is to understand why. Sure, it could boil down to psychographic behavior. Or it could be because your site looks and feels different, depending on which browser you use to visit it. A site that delivers a speedy user experience for Chrome could be significantly slower for Firefox — and countless studies have found that page speed is one of the single biggest factors affecting conversions and revenue. Getting browser metrics is the first step toward gaining a better understanding your users and your site.

Original image via Dmitriy Shironosov/Shutterstock

Joshua Bixby is president of Strangeloop Networks, a company that provides website acceleration solutions to companies like Visa, Petco, Travelocity and OReilly Media. Joshua also maintains the blog Web Performance Today, which explores issues and ideas about site speed, user behavior, and website optimization.

Google Chrome isn’t just for über-geeks anymore. Google’s minimalist web browser is now the most popular web browser in the world, according to the latest figures from StatCounter.

For the week of May 14th to May 20th, Chrome edged out Internet Explorer — which has been losing market share precipitously — for the first time ever. StatCounter’s data shows that Mozilla Firefox has been slowly dipping in popularity, and that Chrome surpassed it in market share in early November last year (though Firefox usage shot up a bit in recent weeks).

The news isn’t too surprising, since Google has done a remarkable job of quickly improving Chrome and adding features that easily tie into your Google account. Last week, the company added a useful tab synchronization feature to the latest version of Chrome, which likely helped drive new downloads.

Looking at the browser market by region, it’s clear that South America gave Chrome a big push in worldwide numbers. Chrome’s popularity skyrocketed in South America over the last year, almost doubling to 52 percent. It’s unclear what exactly is driving Chrome’s numbers in the region, though I assume the popularity of Google’s Orkut social network in Brazil has something to do with it.

In North America, Internet Explorer is still slightly more popular than Chrome, though Microsoft’s browser has been steadily dropping in popularity over the last year. That generally seems to be the story of most regions — even though Internet Explorer 9 was a surprisingly intriguing release, it wasn’t enough to fight against the rising tide of Chrome hype.

Via The Verge; Photo via Van_PC/Flickr

Mozilla has released a new update of its popular open-source web browser Firefox today, which packs a handful of changes, bug fixes, new features, and a brand new version number.

Firefox 12 has two notable additions to its feature set. The first is the appearance of Page Source lines that are numbered, an exciting development but something most people probably aren’t super excited about. The second addition is the availability of (ninja) silent updates for Windows, which bypass the User Account Control prompt so you have one less screen bothering you.

One thing that isn’t available in this version is the experimental feature that allows you to toggle web browser plugins on and off to help speed up page load times, cut down on data usage, or whatever the reason may be. You actually have to “opt-in” to the plugins before they begin working on the page. This functionality, is of course, already available through third-party Firefox add-ons. So if you really have your heart set on opt-in plugin support, you can make that happen.

We’ve listed Mozilla’s overview of changes in the new version below.

• New – Windows: Firefox is now easier to update with one less prompt (User Account Control)
• New – Page Source now has line numbers
• Changed – Line breaks are now supported in the title attribute
• Changed – Improvements to “Find in Page” to center search result
• Changed – URLs pasted into the download manager window are now automatically downloaded
• Developer – Support for the text-align-last CSS property has been added
• Developer – Experimental support for ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects has been implemented
• Fixed – Various security fixes
• Fixed – Some TinyMCE-based editors failed to load (739141)
• Fixed – OS X: WebGL performance may be degraded on some hardware (713305)
• The full list of changes in version 12.0 is available on Mozilla’s official site.

Firefox art via Studio Jon Garza

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mozilla has decided to begin work on a touch-enabled version of its popular Firefox web browser for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system, the company revealed yesterday.

The Windows 8 OS allows companies to develop apps for its touch-based Metro interface as well as for a traditional desktop interface. But while Mozilla has the traditional side essentially covered with the current iteration of Firefox for PCs, the company has to start developing the Metro app, which requires much different coding.

“Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points,” the Firefox team said in its Windows 8 planning document. “The feature goal here is a new Gecko-based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts.”

Mozilla said it plans to have a “proof-of-concept” version of its signature browser ready for the Metro interface next quarter, and it will then release further versions throughout the rest of the year.

Firefox will compete with Microsoft’s pre-installed Internet Explorer 10 for Metro. Google, Apple, and Opera — which all make rival web browsers — have thus far not announced creating Metro-enabled browsers for Windows 8. But as momentum builds for Windows 8′s launch later this year, we expect they will jump on board.

Would you like to see all browser makers create Metro-style apps?

Red Panda photo (which looks like a Firefox): Flickr/Ogwen

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

“IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away,” wrote Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Marketing, in a company blog post. “Less than a year later, I’m thrilled to say that the United States has joined the ranks of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway in dropping below 1% usage of IE6.”

Last March, Microsoft launched the IE6 Countdown website to track the slow and painful death of the outdated browser. Microsoft even partnered with many tech companies and websites like Kayak, Meebo and CNET to advertise a banner to IE6 users encouraging them to upgrade. The most stubborn country to update is China with 25.5 percent of that country’s share allocated for IE6, according to IE6 Countdown. Other update offenders include South Korea, which has 7.2% IE6 share, and Japan at 5.9% IE6 share.

Facebook, one of the most trafficked sites in the world, has even gone a step further to help get the world’s browsers upgraded. Last week, it was reported that Facebook’s new Timeline feature would not function for Internet Explorer 7 users, forcing them to update to IE8 or IE9.

Of course, in the complete scope of things, Microsoft might not want to drink too much of that champagne because Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers are munching away at Internet Explorer’s market share. A December report by StatCounter said Chrome has 25.7 percent share of the global browser market while Firefox has a 25.2 percent share. While Internet Explorer is still the big dog, it’s losing ground fast to its peers.

Competing browsers, like Firefox and Apple’s Safari, have provided automatic updates for years. IE’s decision to follow suit is still significant, though. IE still commands 21.2 percent of all browser usage, according to data collected by W3schools.com. However, within that figure, only 5.1 percent of people in November 2011 are using the most recent version of the browser, IE 9.

“This is an important step in helping to move the Web forward,” wrote Internet Explorer Senior Director Ryan Gavin on the IE blog. “The Web overall is better – and safer – when more people run the most up-to-date browser.”

Updating to the latest browser version will also help speed up HTML5 adoption across all websites — meaning websites will be more dynamic and able to function regardless of the device constraints (mobile, desktop, etc.). It’ll also cut down on security exploits that enable identify theft.

Microsoft is pushing out the automatic IE updates starting in January to all machines running Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 to users in Australia and Brazil, with the worldwide roll out to follow. Only users who have explicitly turned on the “automatic updates” feature will experience the auto updates. However, many people may have this setting enabled due to constant prompts by Windows each time there’s an available update.

Inevitably, many IT departments will be hesitant about upgrading automatically because they don’t know exactly how the changes will interact with their company’s infrastructure. (And generally speaking, many IT departments also like to test any new upgrades before rolling them out company-wide to ensure everything continues running smoothly.) Gavin acknowledges this and advises them to use the Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits to prevent this from happening.

Firefox users have seen quick updates of their browsers ever since Mozilla decided to mimic Google Chrome’s rapid release schedule. Six weeks ago Firefox 7 debuted with performance gains, and six weeks before that Firefox 6 hit with extra tools for developers. Mozilla has been a little spooked ever since it started to look like Google Chrome could overtake Firefox as the number 2 browser.

Two big changes are in store for those updating to Firefox 8. First, there is the addition of a Twitter search tool that can be selected from the top right corner, like searching Google, Bing or Wikipedia. Second, Firefox 8 disables add-ons by default and forces users to re-reselect add-ons if they truly want to use them.

“Add-ons installed by third parties present a number of problems: they can slow down Firefox start-up and page loading time, they clutter the interface with toolbars that often go unused, they lag behind on compatibility and security updates, and most importantly, they take the user out of control of their add-ons,” said Mozilla programmer Justin Scott in an August blog post about the decision.

Firefox 8 also adds support for “Cross-Origin Resource Sharing,” which lets developers load WebGL graphics and textures from other domains securely. Additionally, the updated browser offers a faster way to restore windows with many tabs that can be turned on from the Firefox Menu under Options/Preferences.

We reported at the beginning of August that Chrome had overtaken Firefox in the UK, but now that trend appears to be intensifying on a worldwide scale. Chrome has gained an incredible eight percentage points in worldwide market share since January, which is a 50 percent increase in total share growth, and it is expected to keep growing at a quick pace.

The data from StatCounter, as first noted by Computerworld, says both Microsoft’s No. 1 Internet Explorer and Firefox have been losing market share since January, with most of those lost customers being picked up by Google.

As of Wednesday, Chrome’s global share for September was 23.6% with Firefox at 26.8% and Internet Explorer at 41.7%. For Chrome to surpass Firefox by the end of the year, StatCounter makes the assumption that Chrome’s rapid growth will continue at the same pace. At the end of the year, Chrome should have approximately 26.6% share and Firefox should have 25.3%.

A rival report by U.S. web metrics company Net Applications shows a much wider current gap between Chrome and Firefox. In August, Net Apps said Chrome had 15.5% of market share and Firefox had 22.6%. But if Chrome keeps up its growth pace, Net Applications’ data points to Chrome surpassing Firefox by the middle of 2012, which would still be an impressive feat.

What’s your favorite web browser?

Though several reports have suggested users can download the new Mozilla Firefox 6 browser early from the company’s FTP server, Mozilla says that version is not final and the real build will be available tomorrow.

“As part of Mozilla’s open source development process, we post our builds publicly for testing and verification,” a Mozilla spokesperson told VentureBeat. “While we appreciate everyone’s excitement about the Firefox release, these builds are currently not final and are still going through QA testing.”

While tomorrow’s releases are probably extremely similar to those on Mozilla’s servers, it’s not that hard to wait an extra day to be sure. Well, maybe a little.

Firefox fans have good reason to be excited for the new release. General improvements include a slight decrease in startup time, a performance boost for Linux users and a feature that highlights the domain you are actually at in the URL address bar. The new build also features a handy permissions tool that lets people set site-specific permissions for saved passwords, popups and cookies.

Mozilla has mimicked Google Chrome’s rapid release schedule and plans to release new builds of Firefox much faster than it previously did. Businesses have balked at the rapid release cycle because it takes time to test plug-ins and administrators don’t want to update a large number of machines every few months to get security updates. But, to be fair, Mozilla is aiming the product mostly at consumers rather than businesses.

Are you excited about the new build of Firefox or have you switched over the Chrome or IE9?

Angry Birds maker Rovio might be in the process of raising another round of funding.

When asked what companies were raising money, Rovio’s head of global brand advertising Wibe Wagemans raised his hand. When asked whether the company was raising money on stage, he said the company was always looking for funding.

“That’s news to me,” joked Accel partner and Rovio investor Rich Wong.

And when a member of the audience went up to ask Wagemans if he was serious about raising money, he said the company was serious. The whole hoopla went down at a presentation at the GamesBeat 2011 conference in San Francisco, Calif., today.

“We’re in fast growth mode, so we’re always on the lookout for good money,” Wagemans said. “We’re always interested.”

Angry Birds is a popular game on mobile devices where players fling birds at structures to try to destroy pigs. It started on smartphones like the iPhone and on tablets like the iPad. It has since expanded to a large number of other platforms like web browsers and TV boxes that are powered by operating systems like Android.

The company finished raising its last round of money – $42 million —  in March this year. Rovio has been expanding through 2010 and 2011 and currently has 50 employees in Finland.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Having voice and video calling through a web browser would eliminate the need for a stand-alone program like Skype, the current leader in worldwide video calling. Users would instead be able to use Web-based apps to make video calls.

“Our goal is to enable Chrome with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple Javascript APIs,” Henrik Andreasson, a Google programmer, wrote on Friday. “We are working hard to provide full RTC support in Chrome all the way from WebKit down to the native audio and video parts.”

If possible, Google wants the open-source WebRTC protocols to be integrated into all Web browsers, which would enable developers—or even Google itself—to build voice and video chat programs directly into those browsers. It will first add WebRTC to Chrome, then work with allies like Mozilla and Opera to add those programs to their respective browsers.

Google already offers video and voice chat through its Gmail Web mail service, so any Gmail user on any browser can voice or video call other Gmail users. But this would take the concept further by adding real-time abilities to the browser and open the possibilities to new types of Web apps and video services.

Mozilla touts over 1,000 improvements in the new browser, but it’s certainly nowhere near as big a leap as Firefox 4 was over its predecessor. Firefox 5 features improved HTML5, sync and developer support, as well as new Do Not Track privacy features in its Android version. Mozilla boasts that it’s the first browser to offer cross-platform privacy features. The desktop versions of the browser also support CSS Animations, which will let developers create more interactive sites.

In another era, Mozilla would have likely labeled this release as a point version of Firefox 4 (i.e., Firefox 4.5). But with Google Chrome steaming through browser versions without looking back (it’s up to version 13 in beta testing now), and Microsoft already up to Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla likely felt the need to keep up the pace. As a point of comparison, Firefox 4 came a full two years after the release of Firefox 3.

While this particular Firefox release isn’t very exciting, it’s still good to see Mozilla stepping up its development cycle. I’ve only used Firefox 5 briefly, but it does feel slightly faster than its predecessor. I’m just hoping Mozilla finds more to add with future Firefox releases, because it still needs to find some way to tempt back all of the users who left Firefox for Chrome.

Arguably the biggest enhancement the new Chrome offers is the ability to warn users before they download suspected malicious files, which can help keep users and businesses safe from malware. Using its Safe Browsing API, Chrome already warns users when they are visiting a potentially harmful website.

Two other improvements are notable in this Chrome release. First, it adds the ability to better control what data websites store on your PC or Mac, including the ability to delete Flash cookies from inside Chrome. There’s also the addition of hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, which will add higher quality graphics to websites and apps that integrate 3D effects.

To get Chrome 12 up to snuff, Google offered money to outside researchers who found vulnerabilities in its code. One researcher, Sergey Glazunov, was paid a total of $5,133.70 for finding three bugs. Another winner named “miaubiz” was paid $2,000 for finding a vulnerability labeled “High.”

Chrome now has 160 million users. Since May 2010, Chrome’s share of the world browser market has grown substantially. In May 2010, Chrome had 7.05 percent of browser share. As of May 2011, it had captured 12.52 percent of share, while Apple’s Safari had 7.28 percent, Mozilla’s Firefox had 21.71 percent, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had 54.27 percent. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer saw declines during the same period.

I’ve been using the Chrome 12 beta for several weeks, and it’s one of the best browsers I’ve ever used. It’s fast, it’s warned me away from harmful phishing sites, and it offers a strong selection of themes and extensions.

Have you tried Chrome? How do you think it compares to Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9? What else would you like to see implemented into the browsing experience?

Chrome’s graphics rendering speed is more than ten times faster than it was just a few years ago. It wouldn’t have been possible to render Angry Birds in a web browser a year ago, said Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of Chrome.

Browser-based gaming is becoming increasingly popular thanks to companies like game maker Zynga and its flagship Farmville and Cityville games. They give gamers a way to access their games from almost any device and don’t require a powerful computer or device to run the games. And as browsers have become faster, game developers have even more incentive to build better games for the web and port existing games over to web browsers like Chrome.

Angry Birds is rendered with either WebGL or Canvas 2D, both internal rendering features that speed up the graphics and make the game look great. If the browser supports hardware acceleration, users can play the game in high-definition — like the experience on tablets and other mobile devices. It was a pretty smooth experience porting the game over from mobile devices to the web, which mainly uses Java.

From the presentation on stage, the game looks just about identical to versions that appear on mobile devices like the iPhone and phones running Google’s Android mobile operating system. It slowed down a little bit once or twice when the birds collided with the environment, but for the most part it looked like it runs at the same frame rate as other mobile devices.

Chrome users can also play the complete game offline because it’s stored in the browser’s cache. Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka didn’t say how long it would stay in the cache — so users might have to re-run the game when they restart the browser. Chrome users also get exclusive levels that are only available for the browser version of the game, called the “chrome dimension.” It includes many aesthetic features from the Chrome web browser. “It’s very Chrome,” Vesterbacka said.

“When you run out of battery on your Android device, you can continue on your Chrome netbook,” Vesterbacka said. “And it goes on and on. We think Chrome is a great environment for Angry Birds.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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That we’re beginning to hear about the next major version of Firefox so soon is a good sign that Mozilla is working to speed up its development time. Firefox 3 was released in June 2008, and in the time between that release and Firefox 4 a few weeks ago, Google came out of nowhere to steal away many of Mozilla’s tech-savvy users with the launch of the Google Chrome browser.

Conceivably Tech, which first reported the news, is also hearing that Mozilla is planning for around three major browser releases every year. Mozilla has also listed faster releases as one of the priorities for this year on its Firefox Roadmap, and the company has previously discussed moving to a 16-week release cycle for major releases. Previously, the company struggled to get a single major browser release annually.

None of the Firefox 5 features name so far sounds revolutionary, but it’s good to see Mozilla innovating. The version 5 browser will let you share any web page directly from the location bar, so you won’t have to hunt for Twitter buttons or extensions to share a site with friends. There will also be an integrated identity manager to keep you signed into websites and allow you to login to websites with multiple accounts.

Firefox 5 will also allow web apps to take advantage of its task bar. For example, Facebook will be able to implement a drop down menu with links to your news feed, messages, events and friends right next to the Firefox menu in the task bar.

Other Firefox 5 features aren’t too different from what Chrome already offers: Mozilla plans to implement in-browser previews of PDFs (and potentially other file formats like MP3 in the future), a dedicated new tab page, and the ability to select and move multiple tabs at once (a feature that is in test builds of Chrome at the moment).

Given Mozilla’s new 16 week cycle, the company could release Firefox 5 as soon as late June. More realistically, the June release may end up being a major revamp of Firefox 4 (perhaps a Firefox 4.5 release), while Firefox 5 proper won’t land until the end of the year.

Vishria and his co-founder Tim Howes have said their goal with RockMelt is to re-think the browser in a way that makes sense for a more social, interactive Web experience. Instead of having to constantly return to their favorite websites and social networks, RockMelt users can view their friends’ Facebook and Twitter updates, get notified about new content on their favorite websites, and start Facebook Chats with their friends — all through the browser itself.

The new version of the browser, RockMelt Beta 2, should improve this experience in a couple of key ways. It now includes a Facebook Chat Bar at the bottom of the browser, so that users can have tabs for multiple chats at once. At the same time, Vishria said some users are actually turning the chat feature off because they’re worried about getting bombarded by Facebook friends, so RockMelt now notifies you about a chat without opening a full chat window, making it easier to ignore messages if you’re busy or if they come from someone you don’t want to talk to.

The other big improvement is RockMelt’s Twitter support, which has added things like the ability to view all your “@ replies” on Twitter and take advantage of Twitter search. This makes it more likely that RockMelt users can address all their Twitter needs within the browser and less likely that they’ll have to visit the Twitter site itself.

The third major addition involves what Vishria said is a rethinking of bookmarks. Many people just don’t use bookmarks anymore, he said, but at the same time he saw something promising in apps like Instapaper, which let you bookmark content to read later. So in addition to traditional bookmarks, RockMelt now has a “view later” option, where you can add content that you want to read later without having to add it permanently to your bookmarks.

When RockMelt launched, the company got a lot of attention because of its ambitious vision and its backing from a venture firm whose partners included Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. But there was also plenty of skepticism, because it seemed other startups had attempted and failed to achieve similar goals. This week, Mountain View, Calif.-based RockMelt didn’t share its total user numbers, but it did reveal a few interesting promising facts about its users. On average, RockMelt users spend more than six hours per day in the browser and share content every two to three days. The average user has three chats per day on RockMelt. And 41 percent of RockMelt’s United States users are in high school or college.

“We wanted to build the next generation browser, so it’s gratifying to see that it’s actually being embraced by the next generation,” Vishria said.

The Firefox update couldn’t come soon enough, as the browser has been getting trounced by Google Chrome for the past two years, both in terms of speed and features. Chrome is notorious for kick-starting the current speed obsession among browser makers. And as web applications have become more complex and increasingly reliant on JavaScript, they’ve also become increasingly dependent on faster browsers. Now Mozilla finally has a blazing fast browser to fight back against Chrome.

You can download the final Firefox 4 build on Mozilla’s FTP site, or directly for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Firefox 4 brings with it a completely new interface that, like Chrome and the recently released Internet Explorer 9, aims for minimalism. Gone are the clunky menus and toolbars of past Firefox versions, and in their place there’s a Firefox drop-down menu, tab bar, as well as location and search bars. Firefox 4 is certainly sleeker than what came before, but it’s surprising that it still looks less elegant than IE9 or Chrome. Part of that may be due to Mozilla keeping separate search and location bars — a curious decision since Chrome has proven you can easily use one bar for both functions.

The browser has also gotten much faster thanks to JaegerMonkey, an improvement to Firefox’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. That means Firefox 4 will be able to better tackle sites that rely heavily on Javascript like Facebook and Gmail. In benchmarks of the Firefox 4 Release Candidate (a not-quite final version), Mozilla’s browser still lagged behind the latest version of Chrome, which dovetails with what I’ve seen of the browser in everyday usage.

Mozilla also added hardware acceleration into Firefox 4, which will use your computer’s video card to speed up webpage rendering. It’s fully enabled on the Windows version of Firefox 4, while the Mac version will only get a few elements accelerated. Hardware acceleration is a feature Microsoft made sure to add into IE9, and Google is still testing it in Chrome 10 (although it’s very easy to enable).

Another useful addition to Firefox 4 is Tab Groups (a feature that was originally called Panorama). It gives you a graphical overview of all of your tabs, similar to Exposé in Mac OS X, which you can then use to gather together tabs in specific groups. You can use Tab Groups to keep your collection of work tabs separate from your social media browsing, for example. Ultimately, it’s meant to help you avoid crowding your tab bar, and it may also remove the need to keep multiple Firefox windows open (a purpose that tabs were originally meant to serve).

Also, just like Google Chrome, Firefox 4 sports a sync feature that lets you synchronize bookmarks, settings, passwords, open tabs and more.

Mozilla is definitely playing catchup here. Firefox 4′s faster JavaScript engine has been a long time coming, and synchronization is something that Google has been building up for years now in Chrome. But new features like Tab Groups prove that the open source browser maker still has some fight left in it.

Via Download Squad

Microsoft will be celebrating the browser’s launch in style with a huge party at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. And the celebration may be deserved, as it seems Microsoft may have a major hit on its hands with IE9.

The beta version of the browser saw over 2 million downloads in its first two days available, which was nearly twice the amount of downloads that Internet Explorer 8′s beta received in its first five days. As of February, when the browser left its beta phase and stepped into “Release Candidate” status (the final step before a program’s final release), Internet Explorer 9 was downloaded over 25 million times.

IE9 is a major departure for Microsoft. The browser sports a minimalist design that resembles Google’s Chrome browser, and it packs in modern browser capabilities like a fast Javascript rendering engine and support for HTML5. IE9 also includes hardware acceleration for web-page rendering (it uses your graphics processor to do some of the work) — something that even geek-friendly browsers like Chrome and Firefox have yet to roll out (though it’s coming soon to both).

The browser will also allow for a more interactive experience with Microsoft’s Bing Search engine. You’ll be able to do things like zoom into Bing’s gorgeous background images, or play video in the site’s background.

Internet Explorer 9′s new interface and features could help Microsoft retain its lead with 57 percent of global browser share. The browser has been dropping steadily in market share since the rise of Mozilla’s Firefox browser and Google Chrome (which is also stealing away users from Firefox).

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After finding success on the iPhone with its Flash video-capable mobile browser, SkyFire is now gearing up to launch a version of its mobile browser for the iPad. In addition to Flash video, SkyFire’s iPad app also comes with social features for Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader.

The company says it is waiting for approval for its iPad app, but after Apple approved its iPhone app, I don’t suspect that there’s any reason its iPad version would be rejected. SkyFire’s $2.99 iPhone version drew over 300,000 downloads and made $1 million in its first weekend — a sign that Apple users really want Flash video support. With an iPad version, users can now watch Flash video on the device’s larger 10-inch screen.

SkyFire’s servers transcode Flash video content into an Apple-approved HTML5 standard. To users, this means a slight delay before the video starts playing, but it also leads to more efficient playback as SkyFire’s compression is on average 75 percent more efficient than standard Flash video.

The iPad app also brings some social features that the company first introduced in its SkyFire 3.0 app for Android. It offers Twitter and Facebook “QuickViews”, which let you keep track of your feeds, profile, friends and more. It also has a built-in RSS feed reader and includes support for Google Reader. SkyFire also implements some Facebook features directly into its browser — you can “Like” any story instantly by hitting a button on its toolbar, and it can also tell you which stories are popular among Facebook users.

It’s unclear how much SkyFire will charge for its iPad browser, but I suspect it will be a few dollars more than its $2.99 iPhone version.

Google last announced Chrome’s usage numbers in May, when the figure sat at 70 million users. Chrome now has 9.26 percent of the browser market, making it the third most popular browser, according to research firm Net Applications. While Firefox still has 23 percent of the market, and Internet Explorer leads with 58 percent, Chrome remains the fastest growing browser.

And just when you thought Chrome couldn’t get any faster, Google announced Crankshaft, its new compilation infrastructure for Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. Google says it will greatly improve Chrome’s JavaScript performance for computing-intensive applications — often doubling V8′s previous speeds. Crankshaft will also speed the start-up time of web apps like Gmail. Google reports that the new infrastructure improves page load performance by 12 percent for sites with large amounts of JavaScript.

Google also demonstrated its Instant Search technology working in Chrome’s “Omnibox” address bar. Just like on Google.com, the feature instantly shows you a page of search results in Chrome as you type a search term in the Omnibox. Apparently, it will also instantly load web sites as you type their address as well. For example, simply typing “e” loads ESPN.com, Engadget reports.

Additionally, Google is working on a fast built-in PDF reader for Chrome, as well as full WebGL support, which should allow it to render sophisticated 3D games.

The new Chrome features will appear in Chrome 9, which is currently in developer testing and will be available this year.

In comparison, the beta version of Internet Explorer 8 saw only 1.3 million downloads in five days when it launched in August 2008. The difference shows that Microsoft has finally succeeded with IE9 at making a browser users are interested in. With its faster browsing engine and streamlined user interface, the browser has landed positive reviews across the web.

Microsoft says it has seen over 9 million visits and over 26 million page views at its Beauty of the Web site, which serves as a showcase for IE9′s HTML5 features and is also where you can download the beta.

After using the browser extensively over the past week, I’m not surprised that it’s been so well received. It looks nothing like previous versions of Internet Explorer; instead, it resembles Google’s minimalist styling with its Chrome browser. Most importantly, it’s fast. IE9 includes hardware acceleration for web-page rendering (it uses your graphics processor to do some of the work) — something that even geek-friendly browsers like Chrome and Firefox have yet to roll out (though it’s coming soon).

The new IE a boon for mainstream users, who would never be motivated to install third-party browsers, and businesses, who may see higher productivity from employees using a faster and safer browser. Unfortunately, IE9 will never support Windows XP — which many businesses are still deploying. But moving forward, it’s a sign that Microsoft can eventually get things right. In this case, it only took nine tries.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If mobile browser developer SkyFire has its way, its new SkyFire 2.0 browser will finally give iPhone users access to the wealth of Flash video on the web.

The company has submitted its new browser to the App Store, and it seems confidant that Apple will approve it. SkyFire’s cloud-computing technology allows the browser to translate Flash videos in real-time to Apple-approved HTML5 standards. The company says it adheres to all of Apple’s video and browser guidelines — including the use of a WebKit browser core and H.264 adaptive video streaming.

The new iPhone browser is a follow-up to the Android version of SkyFire 2.0, which also brought Flash support to that platform before it was officially supported.

SkyFire 2.0 also makes its Flash video streaming very efficient. The browser compresses video data by about 75 percent on average — making it easier to stream videos without buffering, and saving precious battery life in the process. SkyFire says the increased efficiency addresses concerns Apple CEO Steve Jobs raised in his open letter about Flash on mobile devices — particularly, his worry about its impact on battery life.

There’s always the chance that Apple would reject the browser, but clearly SkyFire went to great pains to follow its rigid guidelines. And since Apple already approved the Opera Mini 5 web browser — which doesn’t follow all the company’s rules, since it’s not using the WebKit browser framework — there would be little reason for rejecting SkyFire 2.0.