Thanks to a NetMarketshare, we have an idea of the ride each browser took during 2011 in relation to usage. Immediately, you will notice Microsoft’s browser hovering around the 60 percent mark, but its total is steadily decreasing. In fact, the only browser to experience a noticeable gain, again, according to NetMarketShare’s research, was Google Chrome. Most surprisingly, at least to this writer, is the lack of a jump for Safari, Apple’s native browser.

As consumers continue to embrace all things shiny devices starting with a lowercase “i,” they apparently don’t use Safari when they access the web with their iDevice. Even more surprising than Safari’s lack of an increase is the fact that it remains firmly under the 10 percent mark in relation to marketshare. Are iOwners simply avoiding Safari in favor of another browser? Whatever the case, Safari’s incredibly low usage numbers are somewhat eyebrow-raising.

Here’s NetMarketshare’s browser breakdown for 2011, presented in graph form:

Does this mean the end of IE as we know it? Not exactly. As indicated, even with it falling under the halfway point in terms of usage, at 49.58 percent of the market share, Internet Explorer still has more users than the rest of the listed browsers combined. According to the report from NetMarketShare, via FavBrowser.com, Internet Explorer’s two biggest competitors, Firefox and Chrome, have a combined market share of 37.8 percent. It’s only when you add in the reach of Safari, Opera and the ubiquitous “other” browser (8.54%, 1.49%, and 2.59%), does the total number eclipse IE’s share.

Have a look:

W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to the browser that comes preinstalled with their computer, and do not seek out other browser alternatives.[Emphasis added]

The bold section of the previous blockquote helps explain Internet Explorer’s still sizable market share quite well. Of course, as more and more people move away from the traditional methods of browsing in favor of mobile devices and tablet computers, expect these numbers to continue their adjustment.

Besides Internet Explorer’s drop in usage, another thing that stands out is Google Chrome’s increase, which was by more than one percentage point. In September, Chrome’s share was 15.17 percent, and for October, its share increased to 16.59 percent. Google’s browser was the the largest gaining in terms of market share. In fact, it was the only browser to increase by a full point.

Safari experienced gains as well, but not as much as Chrome. Apple’s browser saw its market share increase by .51 percentage points, making it the second highest browser in terms of gains.

At this point in time, Firefox for Tablets is still rough around the edges and has a lot of kinks and bugs to be resolved before the general public receives it. Of course, if the general public wants to test their bug-finding skills, they, too can download the Firefox for Tablets build. While there are other mobile devices listed in the Firefox Nightly section, a blog post by Firefox developer Lucas Rocha indicates the Android tablet environment is the intended recipient, at least in regards to tablet computing:

First of all, you can simply install Fennec’s nightly build on your Android tablet and give us some thoughtful feedback on the UI. File bugs for the missing bits from the planned design, report interaction problems, let us know about broken bits, etc.

As indicated, there are downloads available for both desktop and mobile environments, including Apple, but apparently, the tablet being targeted comes courtesy of the Android OS; specifically, the Honeycomb version.

An article at CNet references Safari’s dominance in the mobile browser industry, which is no doubt reinforced by proliferation of the iPhone. In fact, in the mobile industry, over half of the users who use mobile devices to browse do so with Safari, which represents a massive difference between the mobile and desktop versions. Consider this, according to the browser statistics over at NetMarketShare, only 5.01 percent of desktop surfers used Safari in August, 2011.

Meanwhile, over 50 percent of these same users navigated with Internet Explorer.

Furthermore, the data shows that Apple was (and still is) a niche company in relation to home computing, but when it comes to the mobile industry, their role as a major industry player is reversed. With home computing, Windows machines are the dominant choice in regards to hardware and use, while Apple still occupies its expensive niche. On the mobile industry side of things, these positions are almost completely reversed. For mobile users, Safari is far and away the dominant browser, which is something Apple never even got close to in the home computing market.

Apparently, all Apple needed to do is shrink their technology and wrap it up in a touchscreen-powered bow.

Digression aside, will the introduction of Firefox to the tablet market make a dent in Safari’s current dominance? While tablet growth is indeed on the upswing, only about eight percent of the U.S. population are tablet owners. With that in mind, Firefox probably won’t put a dent in Safari’s mobile market share, especially when Safari comes already installed on Apple’s mobile devices and Firefox must be downloaded and installed.

Much like the built-in benefit Internet Explorer enjoys in the home computing market, Apple receives the same boost with Safari when it comes to the mobile industry.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, here’s the gist: Over at Compuware, the benchmark crew conducted some tests in an effort to determine which browser is the fastest in terms of everyday use. According to TechCrunch, the tests determined which browser loaded pages the fastest, based on a broadband connection:

The data, collected over a one-month time frame, captured the results of 1.86 billion individual measurements on over 200 websites. The results of the test? No surprise here – the winner is Google Chrome.

Another test studied how fast a loaded page became visible on the browser in question. This goes beyond mere page-loading. Displaying the the loaded data was the test subject. While Chrome was once again strong here, the winner of this portion was Firefox.

The posted findings indicate content became visible on a Firefox browser in 2.18 seconds, while Chrome took 2.374 seconds.

When Compuware tested these browsers, they used multiple versions of each. For instance, the Chrome tests were performed on 10, 11, and 12. Of course, Google has since updated Chrome to version 13, and it was not included in these benchmarks. When looking at Compuware’s chart, seen in the lead image, even with updated versions, both Internet Explorer and Safari were consistently slower than Google or Mozilla. Granted, the newer editions reduced their load times–especially noticeable when comparing Safari 4 to 5–but both still trailed their competitors.

Concerning the tests themselves, TechCrunch offered the following disclaimer:

To be clear, Gomez doesn’t test browser speed capabilities in a lab environment, it measures real-world performance – that is, a measurement of how the population actually experiences web browser performance. Traditionally, this data has been used by businesses that want to test their web applications after deployment.

Over at NetMarketShare, the browser breakdown is about what you’d expect:

People, for some reason, are still unwilling to leave the Internet Explorer’s bosom. Apparently, there’s comfort in familiarity, regardless if it reduces the quality, or, at least the speed, of a browsing experience. Whatever the case, for those who prefer comfort, there are others who prefer speed. In that instance, at least for now, Firefox and Chrome are the clear winners.

Google’s plan was to make Gmail feel more like a native app on the iPhone. "Being able to access your toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage your email and move around the app," says user experience designer Brett Lider. "f you use Gmail in your mobile browser a lot, you may have noticed that we recently tried several different variations of these buttons."

The changes are visible when going to Gmail.com from the browser on the iPhone or iPod Touch devices running Apple’s iOS 4. Right now, it’s only available in English. 

Gmail is one of the clear ways (besides search), where Google can stay in front of users who prefer Apple’s devices to Google’s Android devices, and this will be particularly important as Google ramps up its social strategy. Google wants to keep iPhone users happy, even if they’re going to their competitor for the mobile operating system. 

So why not make its apps as iPhone-friendly as possible? Google is also encouraging users to add Gmail to their Home Screens. They’re also reaching out to users, encouraging feedback on their forum or on Twitter with the hashtag #gmailmobile. 

Google of course released a special version of Gmail for the iPad when it came out, offering a two-paned user interface to take advantage of the device’s touchscreen. 

Making the product as appealing as possible across as many devices as possible is just common sense. It will be interesting, however, to see if Gmail for Android-based tablets gets any special treatment, compared to the iPad version.

While extensions became available in Safari 5 lat month for developers, the gallery makes them available to users. A few organizations that have already created extensions for the browser include: Amazon, Bing, Major League Baseball, the New York Times, and Twitter.

"Millions of our customers already use Amazon Wish Lists to store items they want to buy for themselves or receive as gifts," said Gianna Puerini, VP of Worldwide Design and Community at Amazon.com. "With Safari 5, we were able to quickly build the Add to Amazon Wish List extension that lets customers add items from any website to their Amazon Wish List with the click of a button."

Jeff Henshaw, general manager of Bing’s User Experience says, "The Bing Extension for Safari brings Bing search intelligence to everyday browsing with Safari. When a user selects text in Safari, Bing instantly recognizes what they might need and pops up helpful, informative tips, from real time maps and driving directions to real time translations to direct web search results." 

"Our extension for Safari is a great way for readers to get all of the latest breaking news and all the important stories, blogs and columns they want to see," says Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com. "While you browse other sites in Safari, our extension checks for updates and slides in new headlines and thumbnails, so you won’t miss a thing."

"Creating our Twitter extension in Safari couldn’t have been easier," said Jason Goldman, vice president of Product at Twitter. "By providing features like the ability to tweet about a page and view trending topics, we’ve created a simple way to deliver relevant, interesting content to people regardless of where they are on the web."

You get the idea. Expect a lot of useful extensions. 

Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download here. The gallery can be viewed here.

The company says for the week beginning June 21 Chrome surpassed Safari to claim third place in the U.S. browser market.

"This is quite a coup for Google as they have gone from zero to almost 10% of the US market in under two years," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

"There is a battle royal going on between Google and Apple in the internet browser space (Chrome v Safari) as well as in the mobile market (Android v iPhone)."

Chrome had 8.97 percent of the U.S. browser market, edging out Safari which had 8.88 percent. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still lead the U.S. browser market with 52 percent, followed by Firefox with 28.5 percent.

Globally Chrome has been well ahead of Safari for some time with 9.4% of the market compared to 4% for Safari. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has 53% of the global market followed by Firefox on 31%.
 

Google has now introduced a Sidewiki bookmarklet that can be used to read and write Sidewiki entries with Google Chrome, Safari, and other browsers. The bookmarklet is just a shortcut that goes in the bookmarks bar of you browser, and when you click it, it opens up a window showing Sidewiki entries for whatever page you’re on.

When using Sidewiki, an expandable window can be viewed on the left-hand side of the webpage. When expanded, you can see the comments that have been written or contribute your own.

Upon introducing Sidewiki, Google said it uses "multiple signals" based on the "quality of the entry," what they know about the author, and other user-contributed signals like voting and flagging. They say they want to only keep the most relevant entries appearing in the sidebar. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan says Google gave him a few other factors like:

- Use of sophisticated language
- User’s reputation
- User’s history

Users’ Google Profiles are said to play a direct role in whether or not comments appear. Google ranks profiles in a PageRank-like manor, so the higher you profile is ranked, the more likely your comments are able to appear.

Related Articles:

> Google Turning the Web Into an Exclusive Social Network?

> Integration – The Key to Google as a Social Network

> Want to Get Your Google Profile Verified?

Researchers entering the Pwn2Own browser exploit contest at CanSecWest in Vancouver delivered bad news to all three major Web browsers. IE, Safari, and Firefox were all cracked, leaving Google’s Chrome unbroken. When the researchers took a crack at smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android, they also fell short.

Charlie Miller

But the bigger news is the insight Charlie Miller, a security researcher for Independent Security Evaluators who cracked a fully patched MacBook Air through Safari, gave ZDNet in an interview. Miller labeled Mac OS as the easiest of the bunch to exploit while naming Firefox on Windows machines one of the most difficult, and Chrome as almost impossible.

The difficulty Chrome presents, said Miller, is a reason why hackers, especially those in the contest, largely ignore it. Google’s browser is just too much work.

“There are bugs in Chrome but they’re very hard to exploit,” he explained. “I have a Chrome vulnerability right now but I don’t know how to exploit it.  It’s really hard.  The’ve [sic] got that sandbox model that’s hard to get out of… I might have this bug and I might be able to get code execution.  But now you’r ein [sic] a sandbox and you have no permissions to do anything. You need another bug to get out of the sandbox. Now you need two bugs and two exploits.  That raises the bar. “

On the other hand, Mac OS is the easiest, and with rising popularity of Apple machines, it becomes a more attractive target. Over the decades, the sheer ubiquity of Windows machines made Microsoft the biggest target, leaving Mac machines virtually ignored by the hacker community.

Miller suggests it’s the operating system more than the browser these days, and the folks at Microsoft have made it very difficult to exploit Windows via anti-exploit mitigations and randomization, “two hurdles” lacking on Macs.

While Firefox is just slightly more difficult to exploit than IE 8, in Miller’s estimation, the killer combination is Firefox on Windows. “It’s really hard to exploit Firefox on Windows,” he said. “For all the browsers on operating systems, the hardest target is Firefox on Windows.  With Firefox on Mac OS X, you can do whatever you want.  There’s nothing in the Mac operating system that will stop you.”

Inquisitor is a bit different, however, whereas the other two will provide suggestions for actual searches, Inquisitor will bring up specific websites as suggestions. A post on the Yahoo Search Blog says:

Building on the work by the Yahoo! Research team in the paper "Information Re-Retrieval: Repeat Queries in Yahoo! Logs," the algorithm that generates the personalized results has been enhanced to return more targeted results.

We’ve also included a bookmark-based retrieval feature for IE. So, if you are looking for a page you bookmarked a few months ago, say an expense report guide on your local Intranet, you won’t need to fumble around your hundreds of bookmarks and folders to find that page. A simple search in Inquisitor will bring it right up.

Is this going to be the revolutionary search feature Yahoo is looking for in its ongoing struggle to compete with Google? Probably not, but it’s a handy enough feature that some users will find useful. Clearly Safari users have already enjoyed it.