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The latest release of the Firefox 4 beta has arrived, and among the handful of new features introduced this round is the addition of App Tabs. These favicon-sized tabs let you pin your most frequently used programs to the top-left side of your tab bar. In an introductory video, Mozilla suggests tabs for email, calendar, IM and streaming music - you know, Web applications.

But this new feature isn't a copycat of competing browser Google Chrome's forthcoming Web app support and accompanying Chrome Web Store, sadly. It's a copycat of Chrome's simple "pin tab" option instead.

At this year's Google I/O developer conference, the Internet search giant made a surprising announcement: not only was the company releasing a Web-connected "cloud" operating system called "Chrome OS," it would also include an app store called the "Chrome Web Store" which would help users discover, purchase and install Web applications from a central location.

However, you don't have to wait until Chrome OS debuts to install Chrome Web apps - you can test a few of them now by using a Chrome developer build or Chromium, the open-source browser behind Google Chrome.

Internet users in the U.S. have finally caught up with the rest of the world in their browser choice today, with Google's Chrome taking over third place from default Apple browser Safari. The browser, first released just two years ago, has led Safari worldwide since last September, but just this week surpassed it in the U.S. as well, according to Internet traffic analytics company StatCounter.

For some, this is seen as a big win for Google over Apple, as the two companies battle over the search and mobile spheres.

Earlier this morning, Google released a new stable version of Chrome, the company's increasingly popular browser. This new release for Windows, Mac and Linux is the first stable version of Chrome to be distributed with a built-in version of Adobe's widely used Flash Player. Just two days ago, Google enabled the built-in version of Flash in the beta channel versions of Chrome, where it had already been available earlier this year, though Google then disabled this feature after a while.

Flock, the "social" Web browser formerly built on top of Mozilla's Firefox, has just made a radical change. It's now powered by Chromium, the same technology found in the underpinnings of the speedy (and rapidly growing) Google Chrome.

Long decried among many early adopters as slow, busy and buggy, Flock today aims to change those former perceptions with the launch of its overhauled browser. The company describes the new Flock as "simple," "clutter-free" and "lightning fast."

Google's upcoming Chrome operating system - a new OS that will, according to the search giant, arrive on netbook computers sometime later this year - is also going to offer a feature Google engineers have dubbed, unofficially, "chromoting." What's chromoting, you ask? It's remotely accessing your PC applications via the browser. Or, in other words, it's a remote desktop app for your new cloud computer.

WebM, the open video standard introduced at Google's recent I/O developer conference, is now coming to Firefox 4. According Mozilla's Robert O'Callahan, the key sticking point was making sure that the new WebM codec licensing was compatible with GPL - an open-source licensing type that allows users to copy, modify and redistribute software free of charge as long as modifications made are shared with the community.

That issue has now been addressed, allowing Mozilla to support the codec in its Firefox Web browser.

Google just released a new developer version of Chrome. This is the first official version of Chrome with support for the new WebM open video standard. Google introduced WebM at its annual developers conference last month, but until now, support for WebM was only available in Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome, as well as in special builds of Opera and Firefox.

Google will release its Chrome OS - initially to just laptop users - in Q4 InfoWorld reported today. This announcement comes on the heels of rumors that Google is ditching Windows internally. Some are speculating that Google is making room for Chrome OS in its workplace, and may be aiming to compete with Windows in the enterprise.

Extensions for Google Chrome can now send out desktop notifications. Google just announced the availability of a notifications API for Chrome extension developers. Until now, only websites were able to deliver non-model messages with the notifications API, which was first introduced in Chrome 4 for Windows. Now, extension developers will be able to make use of the desktop notifications API to deliver notifications that appear outside of the browser window as well.