internet explorer

Google wants to get a larger pie on the browser market too with its Google Chrome or to say Google is getting greedier day by day. Remember once Google stated that it would not do anything to bring down Mozilla? Remember how it copied and used most of the successful open source components and codes that Mozilla used? Remember how Google promoted Chrome as an affiliate program until quite recently? Now its just doing the opposite. It just wants to move ahead in position with Mozilla and take up its market share.

Speaking to The Times, Google’s Vice President for Product Management, Sundar Pichai mentioned that Google Chrome would come out of its Beta cloud early next year. And not just that, he has plans to promote Google Chrome as a preinstalled product on computers as how Microsoft is promoting its Internet Explorer and its Live Search on HP systems worldwide.

Speaking to Murad Ahmed, he further mentioned, “We will probably do distribution deals,” he said, adding, “we could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed.”

On questions to how Google is planning to market it, he mentioned, “We will throw our weight behind it. We’ve been conservative because it’s still in beta, but once we get it out of beta we will work hard at getting the word out, promoting to users, and marketing will be a part of that.”

The new Safari 3.2 now has the most wanted protection on its browser. The phishing protection would help avoid fraudulent phishing websites and better identify online businesses. The version is available for both Mac and Windows users.

Though search engines like Google have been reporting fraudulent phishing sites and alerting with a window before you access the website, browsers have also been actively participating in fighting fraud websites through various updates. Safari badly needed security features and the phishing protection is a welcome update.

Safari also boasts that it can load pages up to 1.9 times faster than what an Internet Explorer 7 can and 1.7 times faster than a Firefox 2. Safari also claims that it can execute JavaScript 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and in Firefox 2 upto 4 times faster.

After Google betraying Firefox with its Google Chrome, there is some good news for Firefox community. Firefox user base has increase during October having 20% of the browser market share. This would mean out of every 10 internet users, two use Firefox. This is a great achievement and a remarkable milestone.

A recent report by hitslink states that, Firefox usage share has topped 20% on two different weeks during October.

Week of Firefox Share
10/05/08 20.00%
10/12/08 19.90%
10/19/08 19.89%
10/26/08 20.06%

With Google Chromes market share still at 0.74% and Microsoft Internet Explorer ruling at 71.27%, Firefox has emerged as the second closest competitor.

The new Firefox is impressive, fast, simple and user friendly. You just get addicted to it. You just love it and then Internet Explorer just becomes a thing to avoid. The new Mozilla Firefox 3 has:

1. One-click bookmarking to search and organize your websites quickly
2. Instant Web ID to prevent online scams, unsafe net transactions and different kinds of forgeries
3. Full zooming feature
4. Smart location bar to find your favorite sties by just entering a term

The product highlights include:
1. Anti-Malware
2. Parental Controls
3. Anti-Virus Software
4. Cool Add-ons
5. Anti-Phishing
6. Password Manager
7. Clear Private Data
8. Customized Security Settings
9. Automated Update
10. Pop-Up Blocker

However, there are serious threats to its growing popularity as Google is coming up with high marketing plans for its own browser Google Chrome. Google once which promoted Mozilla Firefox is now a serious competitor and wishes to replace Firefox with Chrome in the current popularity rankings.

May be I should have posted this a year ago.

A report submitted by Brian Krebs in Washington Post shows that Internet Explorer was unsafe and prone to security issues 284 days in 2006. Surprisingly, Mozilla Firefox was on a security threat for just nine days in the year.

The huge difference shows that Internet Explorer still could not be regarded as reliable even though it has the largest market share of 80 percent.

The detailed report by Brian Kerbs was started in 2005. Kerbs contacted nearly all researchers who had informed about the critical flaws in products by Microsoft. He also examined the dates these security trends or anomalies were found and their submissions. It has been found that Internet fraudsters had used the security flaws in Microsoft for their own benefit all round the year.

Compiled by Brian Krebs, washingtonpost.com – January 4, 2007

The first major flaw was done by organized criminals who hacked sites and placed codes which can steal passwords using spyware on systems which use Internet Explorer. Microsoft did not take this attack serious and within few days, thousands of customers were already attacked due to this spyware. Since Microsoft was stubborn, a third-party patch was created by some security experts to fix the bug until Microsoft finally developed the fix.

Again in September, hackers used an unpatched flaw in non-Microsoft web server software and installed malicious codes in a huge number of legitimate websites. Websites affected with this malicious code can infect Windows systems if a user just opens the sites using their browser. Again Microsoft was lazy enough to become serious about this huge treat and third-party patches became the savior until Microsoft issued an official update many days later.

With many more browsers coming into the market, it is time that Microsoft realizes the importance of security and gets alerted and responds promptly than ever before.

With the launch of the much hyped Google Chrome, there is yet another competitor in the tough browser market. Google though it repeatedly states it would not hurt Firefox is on the other hand actually marketing the browser in full throttle swallowing most of Firefox users.

Google Chrome is light, fast, easy, simple and powerful. The appearance is impressive and provides no unnecessary options that cover your window view. It is also smaller in size and simple to install. From a technical perspective, it is one of the best open source browsers. The rendering engine WebKit was well chosen as it was an already proven success with features like “speed”.

But then, Internet Explorer which holds monopoly among browsers does not seem to be threatened due to Google Chrome. Google Chrome is yet to overtake Firefox. Well, I might be expecting too much as its not even a month Chrome was released. Will Google Chrome ever be able to overtake Internet Explorer in popularity and usage?

Many internet users do not even know that there are other browsers existing in this planet apart from Internet Explorer. Some feel, till the day Windows operating systems rule, Internet Explorer will also rule.

Let me know your views through this poll and comments.