What's more interesting about Chrome is the activity it's enjoying from early adopters and geeks. Our own browser statistics at ReadWriteWeb show that Chrome was used by 17.89% of our readers in April, putting it behind only Firefox (38.95%) and IE (24.76%). Further, our figures show a very clear movement from Firefox to Chrome over the past year. Chrome has gained nearly 11% over the past year, whereas Firefox has lost over 15%.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

I can also tell you that many of ReadWriteWeb's staff now use Chrome. I myself made the switch as soon as a (relatively) stable Mac version became available in 2009, primarily because I had been experiencing slowness and crashes in Firefox for months prior. I've never looked back - sorry Mozilla. Chrome is fast, hardly ever crashes and can handle multiple tabs with ease. It does the job. The only thing I still use Firefox for is, ironically, offline Gmail! That's because on a Mac, Google Gears is only available on Firefox and Safari - not Chrome.

Before I get assailed by Firefox fans in the comments, granted the much larger NetMarketShare stats show a couple of percentage points of growth for Firefox over the past year. They also show IE losing over 8% share and Chrome gaining over 4%.

Source: NetMarketShare

However, even NetMarketShare's stats show that Firefox's real battle is not with Microsoft's IE anymore (whose downward slide is inevitable and long overdue), but with Google's Chrome.

It's not just on the statistics and performance fronts either. Google is now directly attacking Firefox's main strength from a developer point of view: its ecosystem of add-ons. At the Google I/O event earlier this month, Google announced an application store to help with discovery and sales of Web applications. Some startups have already moved focus from the add-on model to a web site or app (e.g. GetGlue), so Google's App Store will only accelerate this.

Yesterday we reported that the beta tag for Google's Chrome browser has been removed for the Mac and Linux versions. Is that also a sign that the gloves are now off too? Chrome is now a 'serious' browser, no beta tags and all OS's covered with stable versions.

Overall I can't help but think that Chrome is really hitting at the heart of Firefox nowadays. The early adopter and geeky readership of ReadWriteWeb - bless you all - is often a forerunner of future mainstream trends. And our stats clearly show our readers are moving away from Firefox and largely onto Chrome. How long before the mainstream follows?

According to the Director of Firefox Development, Johnathan Nightingale, plugin safety is an issue across the web. "Outdated plugins are a major source of security and stability risk for web users," he wrote in a recent company blog post.

Nightingale says that some studies have shown that the number of users running outdated plugins in their web browser is as high as 80%. However, the plugin checking mechanism built into the latest builds of the Firefox web browser keeps its users better secured as it will prompt you to update your plugins when new ones become available. He notes that over 60% of Firefox users visiting the plugin checker page were running the most recent version of the Adobe Flash plugin, a plugin that's a popular target for attackers looking to exploit security vulnerabilities in the browser. When including users with either the latest version of the Flash plugin or the second most recent, the number was 75%, much higher than the rest of the web as a whole.

Beyond Firefox: Plugin Safety for All Browsers

But plugin safety isn't just an issue for Firefox users. All web surfers who use plugins can be affected by security issues. And most do have plugins, even if they don't realize it.

Mainstream users may not understand that clicking "install Flash" to watch a web video means they've installed a browser plugin, but that's exactly what they just did. And now in Google Chrome, the new web browser from the Internet Search giant, the Adobe Flash plugin will come pre-installed with the browser itself.

To help address the issues of plugin safety outside the Firefox ecosystem, Mozilla has updated their plugin safety page to work with a number of other web browsers, including Safari 4, Chrome 4 and Opera 10.5. It also checks the safety levels of the most popular plugins for Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

If you're using a non-Firefox browser such as those listed above, you can visit this Mozilla webpage and have your plugins checked for you. If any of the plugins are old, just click the "Update Now" button to remedy the situation. If the plugin checker can't determine the status of the plugin, a "Research" button will appear instead. Plugins that are current will show a green "Up to Date" button.

Reminder Badges

Web site owners who want to remind their visitors to check their plugins can add one of these quirky banners to their site. "Groom parrot, Polish trophies, Check plugins," the banner reads.

Although the plugin checker page is a handy tool for web surfers concerned about security, it's better when the browser does it for you. Our online lives are busy enough, we don't need to add another to-do item to our list.

What part of the world has the highest percentage of people who use the best browser available, Google's Chrome? Good job, South America, you're number one. North America isn't just #1 in I.E. use (not that there's anything wrong with that), we're also in last place for Chrome and Firefox. Check out the chart below.

What's the takeaway here? At the very least it means that we North Americans should remember where we stand in terms of online sophistication by our mainstream population, relative to some other places in the world.

Love or hate the government intervention, it's notable to see which browsers are about to get a big boost in user numbers. The EU says increased viability in the browser market will lead to more competition and more innovation. Here are the companies that will get a first crack at new levels of market viability in Europe.

On the Front Page - The Best Known 5

The first page of the Choice Screen, which users will be presented with when they first turn on their computers or when they click a link for it later, will feature whichever five browsers have the largest market share over the previous six months. Microsoft will begin showing the page to users in March, 2010.

Right now the top five will include, in the order listed on an EU page about the program:

• Apple Safari - that's right, even for Windows!


• Google Chrome - so soon. If Chrome can grow so fast, it makes you wonder if government intervention is really needed. Of course, Chrome has been promoted prominently on Google pages. That could become part of the next antitrust issue.


• Microsoft Internet Explorer - gets better all the time, even with dominant market share. Couldn't the EU just require people to stop using IE 6?


• Mozilla Firefox - the classic that's most effectively challenged IE. In fact, it's done so pretty effectively. Too bad Chrome now runs circles around its performance.


• Opera - loved by mobile users, loved by Europeans.

Below the Fold - The Smaller Challengers

Users will be able to scroll the Choice Screen horizontally and see the next 7 most popular browsers at the time. Here's who the EU lists as those browsers today.

• AOL - chuckle if you will, but AOL is doing a lot of innovative work with social networks and lifestreaming these days.
• Maxthon - is a popular browser in China and has its sights set on beating Opera in Europe.
• K-Meleon - says it's a super-fast Windows browser built on Gecko, the same layout engine Firefox uses.
• Flock - is a Mozilla-powered browser that integrates a whole lot of social features. It's got such a great feature set that we recently asked Why don't you love Flock?
• Avant Browser - says that it, in fact, is the browser that's the fastest. It includes an in-line RSS reader and a number of other interesting features.
• Sleipnir - is a highly-customizable browser that says it's big in Japan.
Slim Browser - a Windows browser focused on automating processes.

That's the field, so far! Do you think this move will foster increased innovation? Do you think it's needed?

In June, ReadWriteWeb covered the Google toolbar's translation feature in Internet Explorer. Worldwide Lexicon's browser-based toolbar seems to improve where the Google toolbar leaves off. One of the great features of the Worldwide Lexicon project is that you can correct translations or suggest that a translator improve upon a particular page.

A Russian friend once mentioned that he had a hard time getting entries accepted into Wikipedia because he had a hard time depoliticizing his words. Rather than removing cultural nuances from an article, the Universal Translator gives us a window into an authentic perspective often unlike our own. While no human or machine translation is perfect, this effort is a great step towards bridging truly global dialogue.

You can also interact with the items being tracked via the Glue plugin which features a "like" button and another "2 Cents" button which lets you leave a comment about whatever it is you're viewing.

As with the previously released Firefox plugin, the Glue IE plugin also delivers the same type of interactions as you would expect: the connected conversations around everyday things, recommendations, and web-wide "top lists" that include the top items across the entire Glue network.

You can grab the Glue IE plugin from the main page of the Glue web site here. Note: the "Download" button still features the Firefox logo only at this time, but clicking the button reveals the IE download is available as well.

Disclosure: Alex Iskold (@alexiskold) is the founder of AdaptiveBlue, the company behind Glue, and occasional RWW feature writer.

First and foremost, the biggest news regarding the latest release is definitely the added support for Linux operating systems. In order for Cooliris to work on Linux, you need to run a recent Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 10, OpenSuse 11). You'll also need hardware-accelerated graphics, Flash 10+, and Firefox 3.

Another new feature is the software's ability to now view files that are saved on your own computer. At the moment, this local media support is limited to photos only, but the company is working on adding video support in a later release. In a way, this makes the browser plugin behave somewhat like desktop software as it blurs the line between what's online and what's not. Just as you can browse through Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, and Google Images, you can now click on an item that reads "My Computer" to gain access to your local media store, too.

Finally, the software has been upgraded to include additional metadata about the content you're viewing. This may seem like an inconsequential upgrade, but it actually may be the most useful of them all. Instead of simply browsing through the photos or videos, you can now see additional information like ratings, view counts, title, resolution, etc. If you're flipping through the Facebook photos, you can easily move from one friend's photos to another's by clicking the names of the people tagged in the photo, accessible from the metadata section at the bottom of the image. This upgrade also applies to items in the "Shopping" section of the plugin where you can virtually window shop at Amazon.com.

Glorious Metadata!

Coming Soon: A New Cooliris for iPhone

Cooliris is also releasing an upgrade for their iPhone application, too, which will include some of the same features as the browser plugin. One notable exception, however, is that it won't have the ability to browse through the photos stored locally on the device itself. This is because Apple prevents the application from tapping into that local store, explains Shashi Seth, the company's Chief Revenue Officer. That said, the new iPhone app will display metadata, which should make it a more useful way to surf through your online media, go shopping, or catch up on the news.

Cooliris Raises $15.5 M

The company also announced that it has completed $15.5 million in Series B funding from a group of investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, The Westly Group and the T-Mobile Venture Fund.

The software, originally launched in January 2008, has been downloaded over 10 million times and is seeing 50,000 new downloads per day. The iPhone app has reached 800,000 downloads.

New numbers from analytics firm Net Applications put IE at a mere 67.5%, having dropped more than 7% last year. The bulk of that loss is coming from users of IE 6, an 8 year old browser that many users now appear to be replacing with Firefox, Safari or Chrome, instead of updated versions of IE.

The remaining 20% of web users still using IE 6 could rapidly defect and switch teams to Firefox or Chrome, changing the market share numbers all the more. Who would have thought that a day would come so soon when only 2/3 of web users were using IE? We wouldn't be surprised to see that number fall below 50% relatively soon.

As CNet reports Internet Explorer's drop of seven percentage point since February last year is a continuing trend. Microsoft lost over nine percent of browser market share in the preceding two years.

Now the world has the leading search company pushing its browser, a new mobile version of Firefox will launch soon and the global market for dirt cheap laptops or netbooks is likely to explode in the next few years. How many of those machines will run something other than Explorer? We expect quite a few.

What would the fall of IE mean? It could mean the rise of open, extensible, safer and more contemporary browsers. Perhaps the new IE 8 will change all our lives, though!

Update: Joe Wilcox at EWeek challenges these and Net Applications' numbers in general. That's an interesting read, too.

Net Applications thinks that that the U.S. election, the Thanksgiving holiday, the rising unemployment in the U.S., and the extra weekend in November led to an increase in residential browsing during that month, but the general trends clearly also continued during December.

Will IE8 Make a Difference?

It will be interesting to see if the upcoming release of IE8 will be enough to turn Microsoft's fortunes in the browser market around. While we like the beta version of IE8 as a general purpose browser, it still doesn't have the extensibility and speed of Firefox. Google is also working on an extension architecture for Chrome, which will allow developers to port their Firefox plugins over to Google's browser and give users even more alternatives to IE7 and IE8.

The Future of the Web Browser keynote brought together Joshua Allen (Microsoft), Mike Shaver (Mozilla) and Brian Rakowski (Google) on a panel moderated by JSON creator Douglas Crockford who opened the session by apologizing for Opera not making the conference - their headquarters are in Norway, he explained. "Apple is about eight miles from here; you can do that drive in ten minutes if you're motivated. The reason they are not here is they do not want to talk with you," he said with a grin. And thus, the final session of the day began.

The first topic raised by Crockford was browser security, particularly with regard to add-ons. He asked the panel about risks and what is being done to mitigate them.

According to Allen, as IE has the largest market share, it's also the largest target and this constitutes significant risk. As a result, Microsoft invests heavily in security. Its latest security efforts include developing Web slices and accelerators within IE8.

Rakowsi suggested limiting the capabilities of add-ons would be an efficient measure to lessen security threats. "The Web security model, while not perfect, has been vetted," he said. "We're looking at an extension model that builds on that rather than native code," he explained.

Shaver agreed that limiting privileges and scope for add-ons is the future.

Proprietary Platforms on the Web

The next part of the discussion focused on proprietary platforms like Silverlight and Flash. Crockford claims the Web is under attack by these platforms that share the common disadvantage of not being open. "How does the Web remain competitive? Do these add-ons show the way for the Web to go forward?" he asked.

Rakowski's response was that the capabilities of these closed platforms need to be included in open standards and browsers. Shaver pointed out that the competition of Web browsers has led to many improvements, and Allen responded by saying that stories of threats to the Web are highly overrated. "The factor driving us is multiple vendors," said Allen, "No one controls a big enough portion, it will move as fast as we can work together."

Mobile Browsing and the Open Web

According to Crockford, the biggest threat to openness is mobile. "Out of desperation they're [mobile] looking at supporting the Web, but it looks like they're trying to keep it closed. Is it going to turn out that way?" he asked.

While the question wasn't answered directly by any of the panelists, Rakowski thinks we're going in the right direction. "Turning the mobile Web into the same thing as the PC Web seems to be the way of the future to me," he said. Shaver too sees the mobile Web as a huge opportunity. "The consumer experience has changed, and the Web experience on a mobile should be just as good as it is on a PC," he said.

Allen agreed that having a "really nice browser" on the phone is exciting, but saw it as a bit of wishful thinking and claimed that the mobile phone providers control not only bandwidth, but also infrastructure thus creating walled gardens. "We need to push for Net neutrality," he said.

Shaver disagreed with Allen saying that mobile providers will have a tough time locking users into services as mobile platforms become stronger. However, the Net neutrality issue is going to be one we "fight on for a long time," he said.

Features

Among Visual Explorer's more interesting features are its built-in themes, content filters, and its ability to use IE add-ons. Unlike the latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome, Visual Explorer does not feature any private browsing modes, but it does feature an interesting 'cloaking mode' which hides the browser after it has been inactive for a set amount of time.

Some of Visual Explorer's other interesting features that are not available in IE7 or the latest public beta of IE8 are its ability to save web pages as images, an enhanced download manager, and easy access to RSS subscriptions (though no integration with third-party RSS readers).

Oddly missing, however, is a bookmark bar where you can drag-and-drop your most often used bookmarks for quick and easy access. Visual Explorer also doesn't support IE8's Accelerators.

Just as Slow as IE8

Just as expected, when we ran Visual Explorer through the SunSpider benchmark, the results were identical to those for Microsoft's IE8 - and just as unimpressive, especially when compared to Google's Chrome or the latest nightly releases of Firefox 3.1. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Visual Explorer, just like IE8, feels just as fast as Google's Chrome when browsing regular web sites.

Can it Find its Niche?

The browser market is obviously huge, so even getting a small piece of this pie would be a huge success for Visual Explorer. Other companies like Maxthon and Flock have been able to carve out a niche for themselves, and Visual Explorer might be able to do the same by giving users who need to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer more flexibility and useful features than the original product.

When managing your reading list through the bookmarklet, you now have more options as well. You can view your list as either "normal" or "condensed," select how many items to show per page, open the list in the sidebar, and enable or disable various context menus and additional toolbar buttons.

However, the best feature to come to your reading list is the ability to sort it by PostRank. This functionality, formerly called AideRSS, is something we've been big fans of here at RWW for some time. With PostRank enabled, your reading list is intelligently filtered by popularity. Posts are scored in several ways, including number of comments it received, number of times it's been tagged in Del.icio.us, number of diggs, and how many inbound links it has received. So now, you can read your list in order of importance, an especially useful feature for those suffering from information overload.

Other improvements like updated privacy controls and tweaks to existing features round out this latest release, making Read It Later a great addition to your browser whether that's Firefox or IE. Now all we need is an iPhone bookmarklet and we'll be all set.

Now, in addition to the "full featured" option on Cooliris's Developer page, there's a new "Quick and Simple" option that promises to work on most sites. All you have to do is enter in your URL, and, after some tests are performed, you're provided with an XML file and some embed code to add to your site. The entire process is said to take about ten minutes, but in our testing, it was even quicker than that.

Another new feature in Cooliris is a new sharing option which lets you drag and drop media from the Wall to share with friends. Right now, this feature supports email only, but in the future, sharing via Facebook may become available.

If you're looking for content to view with Cooliris, you can visit Getty Images, the world's largest source of stock photos, which recently became Cooliris-enabled. You can also just launch the plugin and use its "Discovery" option, which loads a list of channels for you to choose from, including one that currently offers photos and videos from the Olympic Games in Beijing.