Software, Safari | featured news

The web giant and other ad companies bypassed privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser on mobile devices and computers – tracking the online habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.

The March launches of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) and Firefox 4 failed to stop Microsoft's and Mozilla's decline in browser share, new Web usage data shows.

Microsoft has launched the finished version of its Internet Explorer 9 web browser amid tough competition from rivals. The company said IE9's graphics handling, security and privacy features put it on an even footing with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and others. The release comes as Microsoft's browser market share is being whittled down by a growing roster of rivals.

Pwn2Own, the annual three-day browser hackathon, has already claimed its first two victims: IE8 on Windows 7 64-bit, and Safari 5 on Mac OS X.

Apple released a new version of Safari on both Mac OS X and Windows, suggesting it has the "performance edge." Our testing doesn't quite agree with that conclusion.

Just last week, Google finally released official betas for its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux.