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Microsoft has gotten itself in hot water again with regards to security.  After a recent bout of security problems whereby hackers broke into the email accounts of human rights activists in China, Microsoft finally admits that Internet Explorer is to blame.  According to this article in the the Telegraph, both Germany and France have issues warnings recommending that their citizens download either Firefox or Google Chrome.  Wow.  Entire countries are telling their citizens to avoid Internet Explorer.  Now, perhaps they can convince their citizens to avoid Windows too?

Yesterday morning, the European union officially dropped the antitrust charges against Microsoft with regards to their default browser, Internet Explorer. According to The Washington Post:

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Microsoft will need to implement a ballot screen that lets users in Europe replace Internet Explorer with another browser, starting March 2010. The deal also means computer manufacturers will now be able to ship PCs in Europe that do not come pre-installed with IE.

This is great news for those living in Europe as it finally allows people to have easy choices instead of Internet Explorer.  Unfortunately, it seems that those of us in the U.S. are not going to benefit from this same courtesy.

Microsoft has long plagued web developers with it’s lack of adherence to common standards, instead choosing to forge ahead in their own little world and assuming everyone will adopt their standards.  While things have improved dramatically in the latest releases, as a web developer, I can’t help but have a bitter taste for Internet Explorer.

So now the question becomes, what can we, in the United States, do about this?  Simple.  Install Firefox, Chrome or Opera and never click on that stupid Internet Explorer icon again!

This is freaking unbelievable to me.  Apple has been in the browser business for much longer than Google.  And Safari ships with all Mac computers as the default browser!  But apparently, Google Chrome is just that cool!

Just last week, Google finally released official betas for its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux. That release had a nice effect on market share for the browser, propelling it past Apple’s Safari and into third place.

So what does this really mean?  Frankly, not a whole heck of a lot since this means that Chrome now has a total of just over 4.4% of the browser market share.   Good, but certainly not in any position to overtake Firefox or Internet Explorer .  In all honesty, I’d be thrilled if Internet Explorer got knocked down a few pegs. But you can have my Firefox when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.  Yes. I’m that attached to it.

So… what do I think of Chrome?  Well, it’s better than Internet Explorer.  It’s better than Opera.  Versus Safari — it’s about a tossup for me.  I’m really not overly attached to either.  I tried Safari.  I really did.  But it just lacks the plugins of Firefox — a feature which I take full advantage of.  And at the end of the day, things are just more intuitive for me in Firefox.  Chrome, on the other hand, is just very different.  And I like that.  And I’ll probably download it and play with it more.