Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which remains the dominant browser but is steadily losing share, is once again trying to regain momentum, this time with the beta release of Internet Explorer 9, a browser which CVP Dean Hachamovitch said today “puts the user’s focus on the sites, not the browser.” That’s a…

The mobile music scene is once again a hotbed of startup activity. In the first wave of innovation, the focus was on ringtones. Now the fashionable thing is music subscription services. The list of companies dabbling in the space are too many to count. Just this week, a Berkeley, Calif.…

Apple’s Steve Jobs declared somewhat famously in April that people don’t search on the phone, but rather use apps to find the nearest restaurant or to read the news. But now there’s at least some evidence that people are tapping both applications and the browser nearly equally, which should be…

A common problem on the web, according to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) VP of product management Sundar Pichai: Finding “great” web apps. “Let’s try to find a great chess game on the web. It’s very hard to find one that’s really good,” he said at Google’s ongoing I/O Conference. “You can’t…

Fresh from making a short-lived surge to the top of iTunes Store’s app chart, browser maker Opera is now buying Australian webmail service FastMail.fm to bolster its own email effort across multiple devices. The Opera desktop web browser, which claims 50 million users, has offered a built-in email client for…

Kid-friendly web browser KidZui—which claims “hundreds of thousands of users”—has added $4 million in additional funding. Kidzui’s browser lets kids navigate to more than two million pre-screened sites; parents get a weekly e-mail showing what their kids have looked at online. A basic version is free, although, for $39.95 a…

At CTIA last year, Motricity’s Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jim Ryan grabbed headlines when he said, “Shame on us…My hope is that the mobile internet does not go down the path of re-creating the internet.” Unlike with the internet, he believes users should pay for content and services they…

Norwegian browser operator Opera has bought mobile ad network AdMarvel as it looks to expand its products in its contest against Apple’s Safari on the iPhone. This past summer, Opera’s mobile browser took a slim lead over Safari’s iPhone version. Opera claims over 50 million mobile users per month. The…

A changing of the guard at mobile browsing powerhouse Opera Software—as co-founder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner is stepping down—with long-time vet Lars Boilesen taking his place. Von Tetzchner ran Opera for 15 years; he’ll stay on full-time in a “strategic” capacity, though no word on his official title. Boilesen…

Revenue growth at Firefox-owner The Mozilla Foundation is slowing. Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said in her annual “state of Mozilla” letter that the foundation’s revenue—which it generates primarily from its deal to make Google (NSDQ: GOOG) the default search engine on its browser—increased five percent year-over-year. That, however, includes heavy losses…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) isn’t launching its Google Chrome operating system quite yet—but it is ready to talk about it. During an event Thursday, VP of product management Sundar Pichai said the operating system was a year away from launch but said the company had “made tons of progress” on what…

It appears increasingly likely that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will finally settle its long-standing litigation with the European Commission. The EC has agreed to “market test” a Microsoft offer to include a ballot screen on new PCs so that users can easily choose to install a browser other than Internet Explorer…

Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) has secured relationships will Research In Motion, Windows Mobile, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to roll out full Flash capabilities to the various smartphone platforms. With such a complete line-up, the only obvious phone remaining is Apple’s iPhone. At the company’s worldwide developer conference in…

Sony (NYSE: SNE) has agreed to put Google’s Chrome browser on new Vaio PCs in the first of what is likely to be several distribution deals that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is counting on to boost the market share of its internet browser. The FT, which first reported on the deal,…

Last week, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) COO Kevin Turner said the company’s Internet Explorer browser was finally showing “great momentum.” He didn’t quite define what he meant, but he did say that while Internet Explorer’s share had been “declining quarter after quarter after quarter” the new version, Internet Explorer 8, was…

Microsoft’s latest offer to the European Commission, which is threatening the company with a big fine for bundling Internet Explorer and Windows together: It’s willing to include a ‘ballot screen’ on all new PCs with Internet Explorer pre-installed so that users can easily choose to install competing browsers on their…

At yesterday’s MobileBeat conference in San Francisco, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Engineering VP Vic Gundotra said the app store trend is just a fad and at some point powerful browsers will take over as the main mechanism for delivering services to the phone, reports FT.com. While that may be true, the…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) would not comment last week in the aftermath of Google’s announcement that it would launch a PC operating system by mid-2010—but CEO Steve Ballmer was more than happy to talk about it at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans Tuesday. “First of all, I will…

Setting the stage for yet another Mountain View-Redmond showdown, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) detailed plans for a free, web-based version of Office that will compete directly with Google’s own suite of online productivity applications. Microsoft had initially said a web-based version of Office was on the way last fall, although it…