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Here an app store, there an app store, everywhere an app store. 2011 is quickly becoming a year of app stores, with each browser offering its own marketplace of Web apps. What's a multi-browser user to do in this world?

Kynetx, a cross-browser platform for browser extensions and apps, wants to give both developers and users a one-stop shop for apps that don't discriminate according to what browser you use for what task. The company has launched an app store of its own for something it's calling "browser apps."

With over 7 million downloads since its release yesterday, Firefox 4 is out of the gate with some strong momentum, it seems.

That number certainly trounces the statistics from the first day of Internet Explorer 9's recent release, which hit a little over 2 million downloads.

Unlike the launch of IE9, yesterday's "download day" for Firefox 4 didn't have a lot of media publicity pushing users to download the latest browser. That hasn't seemed to stop users from upgrading.

Opera Software, the Norway-based browser maker, announced the opening of its Mobile App Store today. The store, which the company launched in conjunction with Appia, the "largest open application marketplace in the world," will provide apps to Opera's mobile browser users across a number of platforms.

According to the company, the store has already been a hit and its placement in its popular mobile browsers should ensure that it continues with this success.

At last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the GSM Association (GSMA) partnered with mobile analytics firm Zokem to publish highlights from Zokem's recent smartphone research study. Its report found that mobile applications are overtaking mobile Web browser usage in terms of monthly use. In addition, apps are now second only to messaging in usage activity, beating both voice and Web for the #2 spot.

Google released the latest beta version of its browser, Google Chrome, today and at least one of the changes is likely to make a lot of phone tech support folks very happy.

In addition to the standard fare updates of making things generally faster and better, the browser now opens all of its settings in a new browser tab, making them entirely searchable and reachable by URL.

Yesterday, Google released a Chrome browser extension that lets users block certain websites from showing up in their Google search results. That way, if you never want to see an eHow article again, you don't have to. Kynetx, a company that offers developers a single platform for building extensions for multiple browsers, saw the announcement and immediately offered $500 to the first person that could create an extension "with the same functionality for all 3 browsers and all 3 major search engines."

Less than a day later, the company has announced a winner and released the extensions.

When the Federal Trade Commission announced late last year that it was investigating ways to protect consumers' privacy, it suggested a "Do Not Track" option for every browser. This would give users the ability to opt out of online advertising - an effort akin to the "Do Not Call" registry, from that bygone era where solicitations came via the phone rather than pop-up ads.

In response, both Mozilla and Google have announced changes to their respective browsers todays, with the addition of "Do Not Track" features for Firefox and Chrome.

Word hit the Web this week, via a Mozilla executive posting on a developer list, that Firefox 4 was finally on its way next month. The only thing standing in the way? About 160 "hard blockers", or significant bugs, that needed to be addressed.

A big part of fixing bugs is testing and today Mozilla announced the next major version of Firefox 4 Beta for users to help test. The latest version includes increased performance, start-up time, bookmarking and graphics capabilities. Read on for the details.

Yesterday, Google announced that future versions of its Chrome browser would not support what has become an industry standard - the H.264 video codec - in providing video on the Web. The move leaves Internet Explorer 9 and Safari as the only browsers supporting the technology, which Google says is not "completely open".

While this might sound like a lot of high tech politics (and it very well may be), some suggest that it comes down to the bottom line. In the end, the move may affect the average Web user, leaving them with poor performance and no universal standards for playing video on the Web.

Google has announced this morning that upcoming versions of its browser, Google Chrome, will only support "completely open codec technologies". As Chrome continues to grab a larger and larger share of the browser market, it will have more influence on developers and Google says that it hopes this move will help to push things in the direction of a continually more open Web.

Others, however, disagree that this will push the Web in a more open direction and argue it will simply complicate the already muddled switchover to HTML5.