Mill Valley, CA-based Sparkplay Media, a developer of 3D browser-based MMOs, has raised a $4.25 million first round from Redpoint Ventures and Prism Ventures. The company, which has been bootstrapped heretofore, will use the funds to build out its first game, Earth Eternal. It claims its platform combines traditional gameplay…

The European Commission launched a new antitrust investigation into Microsoft on Monday, to determine if the software company broke EU competition laws to give its web browser Explorer a leg up over its rivals. The complaint takes aim at one of the software giant’s most popular products, which has an…

Back in 1995 when I started teaching other journalists how to go online, the start-up kit put together by Kristine Loosely at Concentric Resources included a prehistoric version of the Netscape browser and an equally early version of Eudora. It was rudimentary—and revolutionary. ISP Concentric has long since been subsumed…

The Mozilla Foundation, the developer of the Firefox browser, has released an audited financial statement for the year 2006 showing that it took in $66 million for the year, $61 million of which were search royalties, largely from Google (NSDQ: GOOG). These figures are up 26.2 and 21.7 percent respectively.…

Browser app provider Mozilla is breaking out its Thunderbird e-mail tool into a separate company, similar to what Mozilla did. Mozilla, which will still run its Firefox browser, is providing $3 million in seed funding for the new subsidiary, which will be run by David Ascher, currently CTO and VP…

Mogad, a startup that lets friends share and discover websites through a browser plug-in, has raised $500K in a first round financing, PEHub reported. The round was led by Felicis Ventures. Yanda Erlich, one of the founders of the San Francisco-based company, held a post in product management in both…

Hamburg-based browser-games developer Northworks has received an undisclosed amount of funding, Alarm:Clock Euro reported. High Tech Grunderfonds, with ICS Holding, provided the funding for Northworks, which runs the British soccer/football sports manager game GoalUnited. Northworks/ GoalUnited is a minority holding of ICS. HTGF also owns a minority stake. The majority…

Cooliris, a Menlo Park, CA-based company that markets browser applications that offer different ways to view online media, has secured around $1 million of a $3.05 million first round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, PEHub reported. Cooliris has two browser plug-ins, Previews, which lets users see what a page…

Me.dium, a browser plug-in that connects web users based on visits to the same sites, has raised $15 million in its second round of financing, Venturebeat reports. The round was led by Commonwealth Venture Partners. Other participants included previous backers Spark Capital, Appian Ventures, and independent investor, Brad Feld, as…

Browser add-on Clupedia has raised a $1.3 million first round from the Tech Coast Angels, according to SocalTech. Clupedia is developing a Firefox browser add-on that lets users review, rate, and refer users to websites and products. OCBJ: This was the Tech Coast Angels’ biggest funding of its past 25…

Flock, a new browser with a lot of geek-love, has raised another round of funding, led by Shasta Ventures. techCrunch says the amount is rumored to be in the $10 million range. Previous investors included Bessemer Venture Partners and Catamount Ventures (who invested about $2 million). Related: Can Flock Live…

Not sure how significant this is, but worth noting: Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is offering its own version of the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser to its users…this version sets Yahoo as the home page, has Yahoo search built into the browser, and opens Yahoo mail as the second open tag.…

Beijing-based browser startup Maxthon has received a new round of venture funding. The round was led by Charles River Ventures. The Maxthon browser has been downloaded more than 55 million times worldwide since 2003 and ranks as China’s most popular web browser after Microsoft’s (NSDQ: MSFT) IE. Maxthon is built…

The storied Netscape.com will be revived again by AOL (NYSE: TWX), and will relaunch soon as a Digg-like user-driven news/aggregation site with Jason Calacanis at the helm, sources have told paidContent.org. Some Netscape-Calacanis rumors first surfaced on SV gossip site Valleywag. The original Netscape division has been more than decimated…

Browser plug-in company Browster has received about $3.4 million in first round venture funding, according to an SEC filing picked up by PE Week Wire. The company’s IE-plugin software allows pop-up previews of webpages, and helps in browsing and loading pages faster. Funders in this round include Vanguard Ventures and…

Flock, Touted by some who have seen it as a cool browser that could challenge Firefox, if not IE,  raised $2 million in its first round of financing. Not bad for a product with an self-added invite list of 15,000.