New Web browser launches with Netscape backing

By Dana Blankenhorn: Remember the browser wars of the 1990s? (If you don't, ask your dad.) Remember how Microsoft (MSFT) got into all that trouble because it tried to “embrace and extend” its Windows operating system into the Web by killing Netscape with Internet Explorer?

Microsoft launched an ad campaign for "Do Not Track," the function in new versions of Internet Explorer that will signal to advertisers by default that a user does not want to be targeted with ads based on their web browsing behavior.

Google's Chrome Web browser is gaining ground on Firefox, and according to one industry tracker may even have eclipsed its open-source rival in the global market.Chrome was the world's second favorite Web browsing program in November, bumping Firefox from that position for the first month ever, according to StatCounter Global Stats.Google's Chrome had a 25.69 percent share of online browsing last month compared to 25.23 percent for Firefox, according to StatCounter. Firefox is managed by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

Mark J. Perry submits:

Google on Tuesday released a version of its Chrome Web browser for Macintosh computers in a challenge to Safari software Apple offers users of its machines."We took a hefty dose of goodness from the Windows version to build a fast, polished browser for Mac," software engineers John Grabowski and Mike Pinkerton of the Google Chrome team said in a blog post.Late last year Google released a Chrome browser for personal computers running on Windows software made by technology rival Microsoft, which promotes its own Internet Explorer browsers.