What is the best way for IE to gain market share back from Firefox? Porn. That's right--when it comes to the internet, the answer is always porn. You know it, I know it, and apparently Microsoft knows it because there are rumours floating around that they may incorporate a private browsing feature, a.k.a "porn mode," similar to Safari (Firefox pulled the feature from 3.0) that would allow users to thoroughly cover up their smutty tracks from anyone who might be checking their browsing history.

Read More »

Just like they did when Firefox 2 dropped, Microsoft has sent the guys over at Mozilla a congratulatory cake. The nerd food was delivered in person and was graciously accepted by the Firefox crew, who managed to hold back snide remarks about the cake's standard compliance and proprietary recipe long enough to take a few pictures. At least Microsoft has a sense of humour about their eroding market share. [Al Billings]

Read More »

Ever since Mozilla began work on a mobile version of its Firefox browser, convincing mobile operators to allow it has been an uphill battle. Naturally, an open internet would be a great benefit to users, but the operators would lose precious revenue from content providers. They would also have to contend with the expensive problem of beefing up their 3G networks. Unfortunately, open internet access is going to be a battleground for mobile operators whether they like it or not. Let's hope they can figure it out soon—Mozilla plans on dropping their mobile browser by the end of 2008.[Computer World and PC World via IntoMobile]

Read More »

Firefox has just hit 500 million downloads worldwide; it is an impressive statistic and we think everyone who works on the project should get a pat on the back. As if their contribution in creating a kick-ass browser was not enough to the world, the Mozilla team is celebrating by raising funds for 500 million grains of rice, which they will give away to poverty stricken nations.

Read More »

WiFi leechers can be a real pain in the ass; they'd happily eat up your bandwidth even if you told them your life depended on it, which given our social existence, it pretty much does. The guys over at Ex Parrot have come up with a great plan to serve up some ice cold revenge to the culprits, which will have their browser displaying characters back-to-front, upside down or in an annoyingly blurred out fashion. You'll have to run some commands to get your pay back, but the how to makes it a cinch. Let us know if you hear any sounds of outrage from the sponging neighbours. Heh, serves them right. [Ex Parrot via Hack n Mod]

Read More »

The iPhone's browsing marketshare stands at .09 percent five months after launch, coming close to being one out of every thousand pageviews on the internet. More interestingly, Windows CE - all Windows mobile platforms combined - has only 66 percent of that. Discuss. [CW]

Sarah at Lifehacker AU got a great tip yesterday. I'm confident most of the GizAU crew knows about StaticICE - if you don't, get thee there post haste! Well tucked away in a tools area you can also find StaticICE browser search plug-ins for IE7 and Firefox. So the next time you're tracking down the best price on some tech gear, you can search with impunity. [Lifehacker Australia]

Despite the fact that IE7 ships with every copy of Vista and is a free download for every Windows XP user, the browser only has a marketshare of 20-27 percent. Contrast that with Firefox's 17% share, according to one site, and things are looking dour for Microsoft. So what do they do? No, not improve the browser. They remove the WGA check on the download, which previously required users to have a legit copy of Windows XP before installing. Is this going to dramatically increase usage? We'll see. [Ars Technica]

Since its launch on November 9th, 2004, Firefox's downloads have continued doubling on a yearly basis. And now, they've reached the blessed, fabled, Holy Grailish 400 million mark.

OK, maybe there's nothing special about 400 million in particular, but it seems like an impressive amount. And congrats to the Mozilla on their free product. Because without it, I couldn't do my job. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Safari and Explorer. And no, I didn't know you were standing right there, Opera, but I sort of don't care.) Let's all dork out and list our favourite extensions in the comments. [spreadfirefox via boygeniusreport]

This is unconfirmed for now, but some forum poster at Neogaf claims that Nintendo is going to discontinue the DS Lite web browser. Seeing as you had to pay $29 for a web browser that wasn't even that great, we can understand why. [Amazon via Neogaf via DS Fanboy]