It was only a matter of time. Google Chrome, the internet browser they introduced in 2008, has been growing like crazy, passing Firefox to become the 2nd-most popular browser worldwide in the last quarter of 2011. Last week, it took the top spot from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which has held that position for what seems like decades. Global traffic analytics company StatCounter has been tracking the data for years. Following Firefox are Safari at #4 and Opera at #5. One asterisk on the numbers: Firefox allows users to block their usage data making it invisible to StatCounter. With some estimating…

Apple has released it’s new version of Safari. The latest version of the popular web browser, Safari 5, boasts a performance boost and many more little additions to make users lives a bit easier. This update adds Bing search and secure sandboxed extensions. As well, there will be support for more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies. “Safari continues to lead the pack in performance, innovation and standards support,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari now runs on over 200 million devices worldwide and its open source WebKit engine…

Apple has decided that actions speak louder than words or Thoughts on Flash, and has published an HTML5 showcase, advocating open web standards as the future of the web. The one touch of irony? The demos are Safari-only. While it’s clear the reason for this is that HTML5 is still in it’s infancy and support across varying browsers isn’t perfect, this might backfire and end up garnering support for Adobe’s Flash platform. The demos highlight the advanced features of HTML5, including video, typography, animations, transitions and 3D. Accessing the site in any browser other than Safari displays…

In a big surprise for iPhone users in search of choice, Apple has approved the third-party Opera Mini app for the iPhone. This version of Opera Mini has been developed specifically for the iPhone and is impressively fast. This is because it compresses data by up to 90 percent before fetching that data to the device, which has the effect of greatly accelerating page load speed (that’s particularly good if you’re on a slower EDGE network). It took Apple – known to reject apps which emulate those it provides – just three weeks to approve Opera Mini for the iPhone. The free Safari replacement is now available…

There’s an iPhone browser break out beginning, with Opera Software submitting its Opera Mini 5 browser/app for the iPhone to the App Store. All that’s left is to wait and see if Apple will approve the Safari-competing browser….