Following yesterday’s release of the new mobile version of the Chrome browser, Google is today launching an improved version of its desktop counterpart. The updated release of Chrome (Stable version) brings several features beta users have had since January, most notably omnibox pre-rendering and increased security protections.

The omnibox, Google’s name for the all-in-one search/address bar in Chrome, will now not only autocomplete URLs of sites you’re likely to visit, it will also work in the background to pre-render the page in question. Then, when you hit “Enter,” the site will appear much quicker – even instantly in some cases. In real world terms, this is the kind of trick that makes it seem like Chrome has been sped up, when really, it’s just that sites are loading up behind the scenes. Mainstream end users won’t know the difference, however, and will just think their browser seems faster today.

The other major update involves improvements to Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology. Previously, Chrome was focused on protecting you from visiting malicious websites, but with the new verssion, it also now scans the files you download for malware. In particular, it’s on the lookout for executables like “.exe” or “.msi” files which many malicious sites push out to victims, often pretending that they’re offering free anti-virus software.

If you try to download a file containing malware using the updated version of Chrome, it will now warn you that the file appears to be malicious and you should discard it. To determine the legitimacy of the file involved, Chrome checks a whitelist of known good files and publishers. If the file isn’t found there, Chrome then checks with Google for additional information, like whether the site is known to host high numbers of malicious downloads, for example. It also uses machine learning analysis to classify the downloads in question, allowing the browser to ID files even after they’ve been “re-packed” in attempts to fool anti-virus programs.

A number of other security issues and bugs have also been addressed in the new release, and these have been detailed further on the Google Chrome Releases blog.

Although not out today, Google promises its browser-based operating system Chrome OS will soon see improvements too, including a new image editor that will allow photo viewing, editing and social sharing and an improved Verizon 3G activation portal.

Google’s move to demote the Chrome website in search rankings in January led to a decline in browser market share, according to new data from Net Applications. Google’s Chrome web browser dropped from 19.11% in December to 18.94% in January, the firm found. Meanwhile, among the other browsers, only Internet Explorer saw significant gains during the month, going from 51.87% in December to 52.96% in January.

The reason behind Chrome’s drop – the first in two years – is likely the advertising scandal Google found itself last month. Google had hired a third-party ad agency Unruly Media to drive views of a new Chrome video by paying bloggers to post it on their own websites. One blogger linked back to the Chrome download page, without using a “nofollow” attribute which would have prevented the page from getting an extra boost. The move was in clear violation of Google’s own paid link policy put in place to combat spam. Penalties for actions like this range from a month to a year of penalized search rank.

Google ended up doing the right thing and demoting the Chrome download page (www.google.com/chrome) for at least 60 days by setting its rank to zero. Previously, Chrome ranked #2 in a search for “browser,” but after the demotion, it was #50. Today, the Chrome website is showing up on page 6 of Google Search – in other words, practically invisible.

Chrome’s loss, for now at least, is IE’s gain. In fact, TechCrunch itself saw similar trends in January, much to our surprise (shock/horror). IE was ahead of both Firefox and Chrome for referral traffic mid-month. Our data showed that it was (TC parent company) AOL traffic that was so IE-friendly.

But that seems to be a coincidence. According to Net Applications, Windows XP’s market share grew in January, going from 0.67 points to 47.19 points, something that could have contributed to IE’s bump. To be clear, Windows XP didn’t necessarily see more users, it saw more usage. Maybe the typical year-end wrap-up work at businesses led to increased XP usage, as IE6 still powers some business applications? Or maybe browser market share numbers pulled from sources like Net Applications should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

For what it’s worth, other browsers saw dips, too, including Firefox, which went from 21.83% to 20.88%, and Safari, which dropped from 4.97% to 4.90%. Opera, saw a tiny gain from 1.66% to  1.67%. More data is available here on the Net Applications website.

Google appears to have paid bloggers to write about Chrome in a way that violates its own paid link policy, according to Search Engine Land. If Google applied a similar penalty to those it’s doled out to past violators, the Chrome download page would be removed from its search engine results for between a month and a year. Don’t bet on that happening, though. The campaign is another example of how Google’s diverse business can lead it to trip over itself.

[Update: Read the next two installments in the saga:

#2 -Google Blames Paid Link Policy Violation On Agency Unruly, Which Blames Sponsored Blogger

#3 - Not So Evil: Google Penalizes Chrome's PageRank For Policy Violation. It covers details of the 60 day penalty to Chrome search ranking, and I argue that Google may not be lying when it says it didn't authorize the sponsored blog post campaign.]

The crux of the issue is that Google or its advertising firm Unruly has sponsored bloggers to discuss its browser and include a “Chrome for small businesses”  promo video, as first spotted by SEO Book. Some of these posts purport to be reviews of Chrome and how it aids merchants. In reality, they provide no details on Chrome features or how the browser can actually benefit small businesses. This classifies them as garbage posts — the kind Google demoted in its Panda algorithm update. SEL’s Danny Sullivan does a deep dive into several of the sponsored blog posts if you want examples.

It would be fine for Google to have paid for links to the Chrome download page if the bloggers used the nofollow attribute. This indicates to PageRank that a link was paid for and shouldn’t influence search rankings. At least one didn’t. If you really want to voice your discontent over Google sidestepping it’s own rules, you can complain about this sponsored post using Google’s paid link reporting tool.

The violation could have been an error on the part of the sponsored bloggers. Still, Google should have predicted scrutiny and been more careful with the instructions the bloggers received. Google’s wide footprint gives it plenty of cross-promotion opportunities. But as we saw with the Fingergate Google+ photo takedown issue, it can also make it hard for the company to consistently adhere to all of its policies.

[Image Credit: Shutterstock]

The past few days, there’s been a lot of talk about web browsers. The report that Google will be paying Mozilla close to one billion dollars over the next three years to ensure that their search engine remains the default for Firefox is fascinating for a few reasons. The biggest is that Google now makes a Firefox competitor, Chrome. And it got me thinking about Safari.

Remember Safari?

While Chrome has skyrocketed from 0 percent market share in August 2008 to over 25 percent last month, Apple’s web browser lingers somewhere between 5 and 8 percent, depending on what numbers you look at. While its growth seemed to stall out in late 2008/early 2009, Safari has been growing again since then. But it has been at a very slow, methodical pace compared to the Google browser.

Given the fact that both browsers are based on WebKit — a layout engine which was born out of Apple — why hasn’t it been Safari that has taken off, instead of Chrome?

The easy answer that most people jump to is Windows. Microsoft’s OS is still by far the dominant one even with record Mac sales quarter after quarter. But while Safari is usually associated with the Mac (since it’s baked into OS X), it has actually been available for Windows quite a bit longer than Chrome has been.

Safari for Windows was unveiled in beta in June 2007. It was formally released in March 2008. Chrome wasn’t unveiled until September of that year. Incidentally, it was Windows-only at the time. But it took Google’s browser just a year to surpass Safari in market share.

So if it wasn’t Windows, what else led to Chrome’s rise?

Another thing people often point to is speed. A number of benchmarks point to Chrome being the fastest browser available in terms of both page rendering and JavaScript performance.

But remember too that when Safari for Windows was announced, several of the same tests showed that it was the fastest browser available for both Macs and PCs (remember, Chrome didn’t exist yet). If this was just about speed, shouldn’t Safari have taken off starting in June 2007 similar to the way that Chrome did in September 2008?

On the flip side, most users throughout the years have complained that Safari for Windows more or less sucks. It’s been a long while since I’ve used it myself, but I recall it being somewhere between Firefox and Internet Explorer in terms of practical performance (that is, how fast it actually feels when using it, tests be damned). But Apple has continued to iterate on it and the latest version, 5.1, is still available on both platforms.

Others point to Google itself as the reason for Chrome’s rise compared to Safari. It’s true that Google does quite a bit of promotion for their browser, including on Google.com every once in a while. But it’s hard to imagine that being a bigger advantage then either IE or Safari which are both baked into Windows and OS X respectively. To get Chrome, a user still has to download something (unless they’re using Chrome OS — but if that’s the case, they’re already probably going to be using Chrome on their other machines). I would imagine that most IE and Safari users don’t download their browser, they use it because it’s the default that comes pre-installed on their machines.

Plus, Safari being bundled by default with iTunes for a time should have helped it gain massive Windows market share. But it would appear that many people downloading it simply weren’t using it.

Maybe it’s extensions that give Chrome the advantage? Maybe, but Safari has had them as well since mid-2010. Sure, Chrome’s extensions are better and much more plentiful, but if that is all that was holding Safari back, developers probably would have stepped up their game there. Plus, Firefox had extensions way before either Chrome or Safari and while they undoubtedly helped grow that browser, it’s also shrinking now in the face of Chrome.

With the launch of OS X Lion, it seemed as if Safari might be poised for a bit of a renaissance. Because the default controls were inverted, third-party software like Chrome was largely broken to begin with on the new OS. Safari also offered features like better multi-touch support and Reading List (which syncs between iOS and OS X Lion) which rivals didn’t match. But with a few months of data in, it looks like the Safari growth is still the same slow and methodical variety, likely rising simply as more Macs are sold.

Given the rise of mobile, it would seem that the massive usage mobile Safari is seeing might help Safari on desktops/laptops too. But again, the numbers don’t really suggest that. Safari is growing, but slowly. Meanwhile Chrome, which isn’t actually a part of Android — not yet, anyway — is skyrocketing without any sort of mobile presence.

Personally, I’m a Chrome user myself. I’ve tried a few times to use Safari as my primary browser (most recently with the OS X Lion upgrade), but I always end up switching back. To me, it’s still about practical performance. Things like: with a dozen or more tabs open, Chrome seems to perform in a way that Safari cannot.

Plus, I can’t live without the URL/Search Omnibox that Chrome offers. And I’m addicted to “pinned” tabs (browser tabs I always have open and are shoved to the left and shrunken down, out of the way from general tabbed web browsing).

It has been nearly 9 years since Safari was first formally introduced on stage by Steve Jobs at Macworld 2003. It has steadily improved and grown market share, but the rise of Chrome in less than half of that time has made Safari look a bit silly.

Of course, that could all change rather quickly if devices like the iPad really are the future of general purpose computing. On mobile devices in general, there’s no question in my mind right now that mobile Safari is ahead of what Google is doing. That’s why it’s odd that the opposite is true on more traditional computers.

And it’s not entirely clear why. Some point to Apple neglect — since the App Store has been such a phenomenon, they’re more inclined to throw resources at native work rather than web work, is the basic argument — but again, given the state of mobile Safari versus the other mobile web browsers, that doesn’t seem to be the case. It could simply be that Google’s Chrome team is really good at what they do, and nailed it from the get go. Good things happen to good products.

It’s not always easy to tell when Chrome has been updated, and at any rate the changes aren’t always significant enough to even wonder about it. But a pair of features worth caring about are user-bound come early 2012, according to Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan, who spoke recently at the Develop conference in Liverpool.

The conference is focused on game development, so it’s no surprise that the features are also game-centric. First, there will be plug-and-play gamepad, webcam, and microphone support in Chrome, and second, the nascent real time communication protocol WebRTC will begin to be implemented as well. This opens the door for seamless video chat and conceivably OnLive-like gaming services.

It’s not as if there are already tons of games and applications waiting to take advantage of gamepads and WebRTC. And while it would extend the capabilities of Chromebooks, for instance, so it would extend the capabilities of any netbook or desktop running Chrome. Still, making the browser platform natively support peripherals is an important step towards making it less of an application layer and more of a primary OS layer.

Replacing the driver layer always introduces all sorts of complications, so it’s no surprise that this hasn’t been properly implemented yet. A passthrough from the OS drivers and device managers has been the standard, and this may take a while to supplant. But if it works, it works, and no one will care whether it’s Microsoft, Apple, Logitech, Adobe, Google, or Halliburton making their webcam work. All they want to do is video chat with their kids.

Kinlan also said that an OnLive-type streaming video/game service is in the works at Google, which should come as no surprise. Google + integration is almost a certainty as well: “Blank is playing Modern Warfare 3! Click here to watch. Click here to rent.” Naturally the hardest part of this service would be the licensing agreements, in which OnLive and others have a long head start. Servers Google has. It’s content they need.

“First quarter” is as specific as Kinlan got, and it’s fairly early to make those determinations anyway, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more when we are nearer the release date.

What is it?
Is it a messenger bag? Is it a briefcase? How about both? Chrome’s Anton laptop bag is equal parts business and play. It comes in both green and black and has a real military feel to it, at least in army green. It may not have the most pockets, or be the lightest bag I’ve toted around, but I can’t help but love it. You can tell the user was in mind during the design process, as proven by swiveling shoulder strap hooks and the cross pattern of the Velcro. It is, after all, the little things that count.

Made of nylon and military spec wax-coated canvas, the Anton is heavy duty enough for a tornado chaser. I got stuck in a downpour yesterday and was really worried about my laptop, but it was safe and dry thanks to the Anton. When the bag is full, it takes on a very boxy shape much like a brief case. When packed with a couple knick knacks, it sports a much more casual look.

The Anton Laptop bag won me over with simple design choices. They mean seem minute, but they make a big difference over time. For one thing, shoulder straps always seem to get twisted around on my bags, making them annoyingly uncomfortable. The Anton’s shoulder strap sports rotating hooks, so no matter how twisted you may find yourself it’s super easy to get settled again, without ever taking off the bag.

Then there’s the cross pattern Velcro that holds the front flap down and closes off the main compartment. This seems reasonless, but I assure you there’s thought behind the madness. The flap itself sports vertical Velcro, while the inside of the bag where the flap connects has horizontal Velcro. That way, when you’re trying to pull the bag open, you don’t have to yank as hard as you would if the Velcro met on both sides all the way across. Just a small patch of Velcro is stuck together. Similarly, there’s a lot of real estate there for the Velcro to attach, so you don’t have to be as precise when closing the bag.

Some other little accents were also apparent, like the inclusion of a slot for a wheelie bag handle. If this is, in fact, to be used as a briefcase then you can bet a wheelie bag will be involved at some point. Just don’t think that it’s a full-fledged pocket like I did at first and try to slide your phone in there.

The bag offers a lot of space — enough to pack everything I need in a day and then some. The laptop sleeve can fit up to a 17-inch MacBook Pro, though if you’re packing a full 17-incher and a lot of other stuff the bag becomes a little heavy in briefcase mode. Overall, however, I found the Anton to be very comfortable and useful.

Who is it for?
This bag would be perfect for the guy who’s a businessman during the week and a fan of the great outdoors on the weekend. It’s heavy-duty enough to pack tools in and take through the woods or on a hike, but has enough sophistication to easily pass at the office. It’d also be a great day bag for anyone who travels heavy, as I really didn’t have trouble carrying around a ton of stuff with this bag.

Do I want it?
You bet I do. The Anton is a bit of a throw-back in terms of style which I appreciated, and I really liked how rugged it was. It’s comfortable, durable, and sports two entirely different looks depending on what you’re carrying/if the strap is connected. The little things won me over, and the bag in general had no trouble maintaining that impression. I give it an A+.

Check out the rest of Bag Week 2011 here.

Evernote is today introducing its first stand-alone product since Peek: a browser extension called Clearly that enables “distraction-free online reading”. Only available as a Chrome add-on for now, Evernote Clearly removes ads, links, navigational elements and whatnot from any block of text you’d like to read on the Web and lets you easily save it to Evernote to read later.

If that sounds a lot like the core functionality of the likes of Readability or Instapaper, you’re probably thinking in the right direction.

Evernote Clearly works best when you’re on a page with a single article, like this one. With one click, you can isolate the text block for comfortable reading, and ‘slide’ right back when you’re done.

The extension also lets you change the appearance and the size of the characters, so you can somewhat customize the experience (see first screenshot below). In addition, you can clip articles to Evernote with the click of a single button to save articles or later reading. Also, a ‘print’ button.

According to Evernote’s blog post, Clearly will even automatically turn a multi-page article into a single page so you no longer need to click from one page to the next anymore, but that didn’t work out for me, as far as the extension I was sent goes (I tried with this post).

Evernote Clearly will soon be available for Firefox, too.

What is it?
Boy am I enjoying bag week. Incase’s Alloy series Compact Backpack was quite the treat, but I have wandering eyes which have now led me to the Chrome Krakow Laptop Bag. The thing about the Krakow is that it can withstand just about anything, which seems to be the trend at Chrome. The company is all about letting you go wild and crazy while keeping your gadgetry safe and snug in your bag. That said, the Krakow falls in line well, and has a design to prove it.

The bag sports industrial metal strap adjusters, along with two metal hooks on the straps themselves. Just from looking at it you can tell the bag is made for some heavy wear and tear, made obvious by the nylon construction with polyurethane coating. But what isn’t so obvious is the weatherproof military-grade truck tarpaulin liner on the inside. To put it plainly, you’d have trouble getting your laptop wet in this bag.

The Krakow is actually a bit of a trickster. When you first catch a peek, it seems as though the entire front of the backpack is the opening flap. Really, it’s just the top third or so that latches closed with Velcro but that illusion gives it a sort of military feel, which I enjoyed. In fact, the Krakow is a pretty good-looking bag all around, with an unobtrusive design and a nice touch of metal to prove its ruggedness.

But it’s not for everyone. The Krakow offers plenty of space, but the majority of pockets more closely resemble sleeves. As I mentioned, you could fit a 17-inch MacBook in the main compartment’s laptop sleeve, and you could probably toss in quite a few other flat things, but nothing that taps too much into the third dimension is going to work. A camera, for example, was tough for me to fit in there along with my laptop, a tablet, a journal, and some other papers.

Who is this for?
The Krakow is for someone who carries a lot of paperwork, files, tablets, (semi-thin) books, magazines, and a laptop. If you plan on packing your lunch and your sports gear and anything else bulky, look elsewhere. The Krakow is also for the modern day adventurist — as long as you’re not dropping it off a cliff, this thing should keep your valuables safe and dry.

I’d venture to say that the number one deal breaker with me and bags is accessibility. Can I take stuff out and put stuff in the bag easily, while I’m walking, without having to take off the bag. In this category, the Krakow wins. You can get into the front zippered pouch with one strap over your shoulder, but that’s child’s play. You can also get into the main compartment with the bag looped over one shoulder because the zipper runs along the top and down one side of the bag.

Do I want it?
Funny you should ask…

I do, in fact, want the Krakow. It looks pretty damn slick (especially in all black) and suits my needs pretty well. I wouldn’t use this for work, since I always have to have a camera/lenses/random gadgets with me, but I’d certainly use it as my primary around-the-town bag in a heartbeat. It’s comfortable, durable, and easy to get into on-the-go. The only drawback is its price tag.

What is it?
If you’re planning on taking a semester off and fly to Europe just to clear your head and get over “her” (or “him”), you’re going to need a backpack. That’s why Chrome made the Yalta, a backpack that looks like a cross between an Weimar-Era bondage truss and something the Good Soldier Švejk would carry through the trenches of World War I.

This is not to say that the Yalta is only for those who browse army surplus shops. This “duffel” style backpack has a large top opening and a rear pocket designed to allow for a laptop (no bigger than the Macbook Air) and/or a tablet. There is also a front pocket. To close it, you simply roll up the lip at the top and connect the chromed metal hook into one of the loops sewn to the back of the backpack. The hook, it should be noted, can double as a bottle opener.

Style-wise the Yalta is stark and utilitarian. I was able to fit quite a bit of kit into this thing, however, and it’s roomy enough for an weekend trip, along with all the electronics necessary for said trip. The laptop pocket is set low against the back should be protected in various situations it was quite secure even when I threw the bag around on the plane. The only complaint is how deep the thing is. Once you fill it up, getting to the bottom takes a while and you can feasibly lose things in its deepest recesses.

Who is this for?
Folks going on semester abroad. Businessmen with an edge going to Scranton for a three-day assignment. Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. Folks on a train who only have 24 hours to fall in and out of love.

Do I want it?
If you need a weekend bag, you could do worse. Many of the online reviews talked up the waterproof fabric and I think that’s the Yalta’s real draw – the sense that you can have a heck of an adventure with this thing without your laptop getting wet. While I think it’s a bit small for a longer trip, it’s more than sufficient for a bit of urban exploring and at $120 it’s a well-priced, roomy bag for folks who want a bit of rubber clad excitement.

Google is shipping more Google+ features today designed to increase user engagement and sharing. These include a YouTube slider that lets you watch and share YouTube videos with your Google+ friends and two new Google Chrome extensions for sharing webpages and tracking your Google+ notifications.

The YouTube slider is a button that appears on the right-side of the Google+ homepage, that, when clicked, slides out to reveal a YouTube search box asking you “What do you want to play?”

When you type in a search and hit enter, a pop-up window appears which is somewhat like a scaled-down version of the YouTube website featuring the video and a playlist of videos matching your search term. As you watch the videos, a “+1 button” at the top of the video lets you perform the Google equivalent of the Facebook “like,” while a prominent green “Share” button lets you post the video to your Google+ profile.

Pop-up windows aren’t the most elegant integration for this new functionality, but it gets the job done.

The new YouTube feature also lets your Google+ friends open a related playlist directly from the video post you shared on the network (via a blue button beneath the update). This is actually kind of great for things like music videos, as indicated by the example below.

YouTube is now being indexed in Google+ search results, too.

The other new additions today are two Google Chrome extensions, whose functionality has been provided by third-parties for some time. The “+1″ extension lets you click a browser toolbar button to like page and share it on Google+. Meanwhile, the Notifications extension displays the Google+ red notifications box indicating new activity (new followers, pluses and comments) on the social network.

Heavy Google+ users probably already had something similar installed, but now there are official versions.

Given Google’s overwhelming obsession with getting into social this year, it’s sort of surprising that it didn’t just bundle these extensions with an update to the Google Chrome browser in order to force Google+ down Google users’ throats the way it did with Google Reader’s latest update (yes, I’m still bitter about that). Maybe that integration is still to come.

In what I think is an interesting experiment, CBS this morning debuted a “60 Minutes” application that you can find in and launch from the Chrome Web Store (which just got a major facelift).

Granted, “adding it to Chrome” doesn’t really do anything but take you to this page, which you can just open in Chrome just like you would any page, but the Web app does look pretty nice.

Powered by HTML5 and CSS3 animations, the Chrome app delivers high-quality video of “60 Minutes” program content, starting with the recently aired interview of Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’s biographer. His book recently hit the stores, in case you hadn’t heard.

CBS says the app will also feature previous segments, clips, and new original content from the “60 Minutes” online series 60MinutesOvertime.com.

Users can browse segments by categories such as Newsmakers, Politics, Science, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Nature, as well as by correspondent.

Looks like Google this morning rolled out a brand new design for its Chrome Web Store, and it’s a major improvement.

The updated Web app marketplace, first released in December 2010, is all about the software, now boasting large squares with attractive app visuals.

On mouse-over, users get a bit more information about the apps, and a one-click install option.

Also worth noting: the menu is now entirely on the left-hand side and is fixed even when scrolling, and Extensions and Themes are no longer highlighted as different sections but rather just navigational items at the end of the list. Also gone is any mention of ‘paid apps’.

When you click a category or an ‘app collection’, you get a more visually pleasing overview of popular Web applications than was the case before, and the app detail pages have also been redesigned featuring a summary, screenshots and videos to promote the app, and tabs you can open to get more details or reviews about the software. There’s also the obligatory +1 button, of course.

Wikipedia has a screenshot that shows how it looked before, if you want to compare.

(Thanks to Saif AL Essai for the heads up)

New Chrome Web Store is live! Go get the Save to Pulse Extension! chrome.google.com/webstore/detai…—
Filip Mares (@filipmares) October 25, 2011

Google announced today that its business and educational customers now have a second option for purchasing its new Chrome OS-powered laptops: upfront pricing, sans subscription. Previously, Chromebooks were only available to these institutions by way of a 3-year commitment. That plan didn’t fit in well with some organization’s yearly budget cycle, says Google.

Now, those customers can choose whether to buy Chromebooks on a subscription basis or just pay for the laptops up front.

The new option provides schools and businesses with access to the Web-based administration console for Chromebook management, phone support and hardware warranty coverage. After the first year, customers can opt to pay a monthly fee for management access and support.

The new prices are as follows:

Education: 

• 1-Year Upfront: $449 (Wi-Fi), $519 (3G)
• Years 2-3: $5/month per Chromebook for management & support

Business:

• 1-Year Upfront: $559 (Wi-Fi), $639 (3G)
• Years 2-3: $13/month per Chromebook for management & support

In addition, Google says the management console itself has been updated, too, with better deployment, customization and asset management options, including integration with Group Policy and the ability to track Chromebook shipments.

On September 1st, Google’s popular browser, Chrome, celebrated its third birthday. In a relatively short span of time, Chrome has gobbled up 22 percent market share among browsers, compared to Firefox at 28 percent and IE at 42 percent. The browser continues to iterate, now working in rapid-fire six-week release cycles, and its ecosystem at large has taken some big strides forward over the last year. For me, personally, I use multiple browsers daily, but Chrome has really become my go-to.

In December, Google debuted Chrome OS and the Chrome Web Store, followed by Chromebooks in June. But, as Jason pointed out in last week’s post, as well as our early coverage in January, the Chrome Web Store had seemingly gotten off to a slow start, perhaps not attracting as much traffic (and, more importantly, sales) as expected prior to launch. Some bolder members of the blogosphere even said, following CWS’ launch, “hey wait a second, isn’t this just a lame series of bookmarks?”

However, Chris Sorensen, Founder of ChromeOSApps.org, an independent website that monitors CWS app performance data, shared some stats with us today that give us a look at the Web Store’s growth since it launched, and the numbers are not quite at a “trickle”, as they were early on. For a bit of context, on January 13 (after about a month of being open for business), the Chrome Web Store had debuted 2,195 apps, and had attracted 4.5 million aggregate users, according to Sorensen’s numbers.

By September 1st, CWS had grown to over 6,000 apps with nearly 28 million aggregate users. On September 9th, CWS has passed 30 million, according to the numbers we’ve seen. As for downloads: The Chrome Web Store only started keeping track of downloads on May 15th, but the latest data from Sorensen indicates that CWS is attracting over 2.5 million weekly downloads.

As seen in the graph below, Google’s Web Store experienced a significant uptick in the number of apps and (more significantly) the number of aggregate users beginning in about June. The likelihood is that the increase the store is seeing to date is a result of early presale of Google’s Chromebooks, which don’t allow users to download native applications.

But what about sales? In January of this year, 2.8 percent of the app store’s total users were using paid apps. By September 1st, 2.1 percent of the 30 million users are using apps with a pricing “other than free”, Sorensen said. As per total apps, in June, 9.1 percent of CWS’ apps had pricing other than free, while on September 1st, that number was down to 5.7 percent. This shows that paid app usage on CWS have been, overall, decreasing since its launch — as has the number of paid apps (at least since June) — while usage and number of free apps has increased more significantly. Especially those bookmark apps and free extensions, which have gone like hotcakes.

While CWS’ numbers are looking more auspicious than they did 6 months ago, the problem for the web store is that it is still hampered by the fact that developer activity just isn’t growing at the same rate as it is on the Android Marketplace or Apple’s app store. Google has some great incentive for developers to offer paid apps, offering 70 percent revenue share to developers for paid app pricing, and 95 percent revenue share for in-app purchases. That’s plenty of incentive for developers to create paid apps, but users just don’t seem to be buying.

Compared to Apple, which will be generating $2.86 billion in app revenue and Android stores which will be pulling in $1.5 billion by 2016, according to Ovum’s research (though total revenue generated by the web store is not known), it seems pretty clear that CWS has a ways to go.

Not to mention, there’s the threat of Facebook’s Project Spartan, the social network’s secret coup to break up the Google/Apple lovefest reigning supreme over the native mobile apps world. For those unfamiliar, Project Spartan is the HTML5-driven mobile application platform Facebook is supposedly building with a group of third-party app developers — and its initial target is Safari, not Chrome.

If Chromebook sales really take off (and as the hardware stands right now, that’s far from a given), the web app store’s progress may well benefit as a result, as Sorensen tells me he predicts a serious rise in the demand for deep, full-featured enterprise desktop apps — but that remains to be seen. Google may also have plans to merge Android and Chrome, but there are a lot of unanswered questions in terms of how the company envisions the future of its web and mobile platforms. For now, Google will have to take solace in its uptick of free users, regardless of the correlation, but danger certainly looms.

Yesterday, we noted that Google quietly rolled out their +1 Button Chrome extension a couple days ago. It’s more powerful than it may seem because you can now easily +1 any page you’re browsing on the web regardless of if the owner of that content placed a button on their site. Just imagine if Facebook has such a extension for their Like Button.. Actually, you don’t have to imagine.

Shortly after our post went up, we were pointed to this extension in the Chrome Web Store. Sure enough, it’s a Facebook Like Button extension, that according to Google’s “verified author” service is indeed built by Facebook itself. What’s surprising is hardly anyone knows about this extension, it has just 500 users!

Perhaps Facebook isn’t touting it at all yet because it is kind of weak. When you click the thumbs up icon, you get a drop-down menu asking you to click an actual Like Button in an overlay. So it’s two-clicks to “like” something. But it does also come with the nice ability to leave a comment as you share something (which the +1 Button extension doesn’t do yet). And it adds Facebook share options to your right-click menu items. From here, you can like a page, share a page, or recommend a page.

It’s certainly possible that this was just a quick hackathon project that one developer threw together at Facebook. It may also be related to their tie-in with Rockmelt, the social browser that is built on top of Chromium (a screenshot on the extension page references it). Quite frankly, it’s surprising this extension exists at all, given the heated relationship between the two companies. It looks like it has been live since July.

After yesterday’s story about the +1 Button extension, a number of readers seemed concerned about Google’s ability to track all of your web movements. Obviously, they’ll have the same concerns about Facebook with this button. Here’s what Facebook has to say on the matter:

You do not need to be logged in to Facebook to install this plugin, but to like, share or recommend a page you will need to log in to a current Facebook account, or create a new one. While the plugin is installed, it will display the total number of likes for the page you are viewing. To provide a personalized experience, Facebook will see some technical information such as the URL of the page you are on, your IP address and the date and time you visited the site. All information collected before you log into Facebook is anonymous or aggregated and will not identify you.

All of the information after you log in…

I’d also like to give a shout out to Hrishikesh Kale who created his own Facebook Like extension after our story yesterday, also not realizing that Facebook already made one.

Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android? It’s a question as old as time itself. Or at least a few years old. But given that the same company, Google, makes both products, it never made much sense. Now they’re finally taking steps to resolve this. A bit. Maybe.

As a group of Googlers have announced on the WebKit-Dev group today (relayed by Google’s Peter Beverloo), the Android team is now committed to working more closely with the WebKit community. Yes, it’s a bit odd that a product so devoted to “open” wasn’t really working with the open source community before — but hey, better late than never.

Writes Andrei Popescu:

We would like to give an update about WebKit on Android. A while ago, we started the effort to upstream the Android port of WebKit. For a variety of reasons, this work took longer than anticipated and was never finished. We realize that the incomplete Android port that exists today in WebKit ToT has caused quite a bit of confusion and inconvenience to the project as a whole and we are very sorry for that.

The full story is a bit more complicated than it appears on the surface. While Android has its own separate browser which isn’t branded as “Chrome”, the two do share some code. But they’re not the same, and two separate teams work on each. For whatever reason, Google chose not to brand the Android browser as Chrome, and doing so now may cause some confusion since there’s Chrome OS — another operating system built by Google that’s unrelated to Android.

So here’s what happening now: Google’s Android team is going to start making available another, slightly modified build of the Android browser, which will be fully open source. Think of it as Chromium to Google’s Chrome. Android-specific code will be removed and presumably, anyone will be able to use this code to build a new mobile WebKit-based browser.

Here’s all of that in tech-speak:

We plan to start by setting up a webkit.org build bot that will compile Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and toolchain. We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the Chromium port to achieve this. We’re fully committed to maintaining this new flavor of the Chromium port of WebKit and having a build bot up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task. At the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android port. This includes the Android-specific code in WebCore/platform/android, as well as any code guarded by the PLATFORM(ANDROID) macro.

What makes the especially hard to follow is that it sure sounds like the Google plans to call this open source version of the Android browser Chromium as well. It will just be a new flavor. Perhaps that’s not so bad since there are already Windows, OS X, and Linux flavors (and the Android one will be really close to the Linux one given the underlying OS technology they share) — but the finished product for all of those operating systems is called Chrome, on Android it still won’t be (presumably, anyway).

Follow all of that?

Yes, it’s still confusing, but regardless, this is a welcomed step in the right direction.

[Thanks Jason for the awesome image]

If you’re on a website that uses accounts, the sign in button can be anywhere. Sure, there are some common best practices, but I can think of dozens of sites that put them all over the place. Mozilla is looking to fix that, by bringing the sign in to the browser level.

A new experimental extension that Mozilla has released for Firefox does exactly this. When it’s installed, you’ll see a new “Sign In” button just to the left of the URL box. Clicking this, pops open a window that prompts you for a username and password for the site you’re on. It then shows you when you’re signed into a site, and gives you one-click ability to sign out. Easy. Simple. Nice.

Of course, the site you’re on has to support this functionality. But Mozilla has made it easy to do so, as they outline in their post on the subject. And the best part is that this can be used with any type of log in — it can be a broad one like OpenID, or specific ones like a blog or even Facebook, Twitter, etc — again, if those sites were to implement something like this.

One important note:

It’s worth noting that this feature doesn’t communicate with any server-side components, and doesn’t capture, store or transfer any personal information. The button is semantically the same as clicking “sign in” on a page: it just tells the page you want to sign in (or sign out) right now.

Essentially, Mozilla is just creating a common place for the sign in button to reside within the browser chrome itself. Though they also note that it will support cookies if the site turns that functionality on as well.

While this is open for any site/service to use, it is also an extension of another Mozilla project: BrowserID. As they announced here last month, their idea for this new web identification system is similar to something like OpenID, which has never quite caught on (Mozilla also says it’s more secure and seamless). Mozilla is trying to re-think identification on the web from a high level.

Beyond BrowserID (which is an open technology anyway), Mozilla doesn’t have any real skin in this game. But some of their competitors could. For example, Google is in the process of implementing a signed in experience for their Chrome browser. This already works with Sync, but Google is working on profiles for Chrome as well. Being signed in on the browser level also allows you to be signed in to Google sites, which is key for something like Chrome OS.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been working with RockMelt on a Facebook signed-in experience for that browser (which, coincidentally is also based on Chromium).

And on a broader level, both Google and Facebook have been thinking about this always-signed-in experience quite a bit. This is especially important in mobile, where it can be more annoying to type in usernames and passwords over and over again. This, along with the focus on being a central identity for the web has led to projects like Facebook’s Single Sign On.

So while Mozilla may have mostly noble intentions here, I still suspect we’re going to see more along these lines from their competitors that aren’t quite as noble. That’s not to say they’re meant to be evil, just done for more selfish reasons. Google already has their browser. I’d bet that Facebook will have one sooner or later. This could help Mozilla, as they could end up as the truly open alternative.

NaClBox (get it?) is a port of DOSBox that allows DOS games to be played right in your browser. Right now you can play titles like Star Wars Tie Fighter complete with multi-voice MIDI sound and hot hot VGA graphics. It works on Macs, PCs, and Linux machines and runs under Chrome 13.

To play the games, you have to turn on the Chrome Native Client (Na Cl, hence the pun):

In the Chrome address bar, type:

about:flags

Find the section titled “Native Client”

Click “Enable” and restart Chrome.

The game downloads and you’re ready to play a moment later. The most interesting thing to note is that this is how games will probably be played under ChromeOS – right in the browser with almost no lag. If this is better or worse than services like Steam I’m not willing to argue, but it does point to some very interesting upcoming features for the OS.

The site has been around for a while but they’ve added some new games and I suspect I just made a few folks’ days with this delightful Hackernews discovery.

Project Page

Facebook is working with a number of partners to prepare for the launch of a music service – possibly called ‘Vibes’ – inside the astoundingly popular social networking site. While you wait, I advise you to check out the amazing +Music extension for Google Chrome (here’s a direct link to the extension).

It’s pretty cool. Once installed, you’ll find a new icon in the Chrome toolbar that lets you quickly search for an artist, stream music and discover links to the artist’s profiles on Facebook, Rdio, Wikipedia, Last.fm and whatnot. The music gets fetched from Blog MP3s or Rdio (subscription required) and you can click the icon to play and pause music mixes, jump to the next track or queue songs.

On any web page you visit, you can now highlight the name of an artist, right-click, and instantly play or queue a mix of songs from said artist. The video below shows you how that works.

Now that’s all really nice, but here’s where it gets interesting. +Music integrates deeply with Facebook and allows you to share full songs with friends, even if they don’t have the extension installed.

It also adds a layer of usefulness on top of Facebook, so when you visit the social network you’ll see a number of enhancements that will enable you to enjoy music with a mere click of the mouse.

For one, on top of Facebook you’ll see a mini-player that lets you play, pause and skip tracks, so no more need to open the +Music dialog box by clicking the icon in the toolbar.

In the ‘Share’ section, you’ll also see a ‘Music’ option that lets you search for an artist, album or track where you’d normally post a status update. You can use it to share YouTube videos or instantly streamable songs or even full albums (MP3s found on blogs Web-wide, or from Rdio).

The screenshot below gives you an idea of what it looks like.

To achieve the above, the add-on uses Facebook’s Open Graph protocol to embed streamable music when you share a track – no authentication required – while the swarm.fm website acts as a home for any content shared via +Music (with more to come, developer Peter Watts tells me).

It doesn’t stop there. The +Music extension also spruces up artist or band pages, adding a button for instant music streaming or queuing next to their name. In addition, the extension shows you similar artists or bands in the left column of their Facebook page. Again, see screenshot below.

Much of the technology behind the +Music extension is powered by The Echo Nest.

If you’re interested in other nifty music apps, be sure to give Ex.fm and Shuffler.fm a whirl.

Compuware’s benchmarks division, Gomez, has just released new data from a website measurement project whose goal was to determine what the fastest web browser is in the “real world” of desktop users. The project only measured load times of users on broadband connections.

The data, collected over a one-month time frame, captured the results of 1.86 billion individual measurements on over 200 websites. The results of the test? No surprise here – the winner is Google Chrome.

In the chart below, you can see the page load time (blue) is lowest (3.433 seconds) for Chrome 12, the latest release of Google’s Web browser. Update: Chrome 13 is the latest release, as of last week. 

On the high end is Apple’s Safari 4 (6.149 seconds) and IE 7 (6.006 seconds), neither of which are the curent versions.

The second metric, perceived render time (green), refers to the amount of time it takes for the visible portion of the page to load in the browser. Again, Chrome did well here (2.374 seconds), but in this case, Firefox 5 did better (2.18 seconds).

To be clear, Gomez doesn’t test browser speed capabilities in a lab environment, it measures real-world performance – that is, a measurement of how the population actually experiences web browser performance. Traditionally, this data has been used by businesses that want to test their web applications after deployment.

As a Google Chrome user myself, these findings back up what I already believed regarding Chrome’s performance – that thing is fast! However, it also makes me think that Firefox 5 may be worth a second look.

More data from this report will be released at a later date, Compuware says.