Mozilla, the firm behind the open-source web browser, which is also the most popular currently, had shared that it would release a Firefox 3.6 version in December 2009, but now, the Mozilla site now states that "ship Firefox 3.6" is a goal it expects to reach during 2010's first quarter.

Als...

                         

 Whenever we write a glowing story aboutFirefox or Mozilla, the ExtremeTech postbag has a tendency to fill up with letters and missives from concerned readers who are worried about Mozilla’s close ties with Google. Almost the entirety of Mozilla’s income — 97% of $104 million — arrives in the form of royalties from the Firefox search box, and the lion’s share (86%, $85 million) of those royalties are paid by the default search engine: Google.

In November 2011...

Google has announced that it will buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. It has been approved by the directors of both companies and should pass regulatory approval by the end of the year. With some 19,000 employees, revenue of $11 billion, and assets of $6 billion, Motorola Mobility is certainly not the biggest manufacturer of its kind — both Samsung and Nokia are many times larger, both in terms of revenue and market share — but this doesn’t make Google’s purchase any less signifi...

Now, engaging in some online jujitsu, the ACLU of Northern California is employing a cautionary Facebook quiz of its own to illustrate how quizzes that may seem "p...

In their July 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings, the company revealed that Google finished first place with 65.1%, down 0.4% from June. Second-place Yahoo! gained ground, increasing 0.2% from June to July and finishing last month with a 16.1% share.

Microsoft's Bing search engine held steady in third place with a 14.4% share,...

The system is called Telex, and it is the brainchild of computer science researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Waterloo in Canada. They will present it Aug. 12 at the USENIX Security Symposium in San Francisco.

"This has the potential to shift the arms race regarding censor...

Facebook wants to be a part of everything we do on the Web. The company's philosophy is that the Internet is more fun when it's shared. In some ways social networks are like parties that never end. The problem is, we can't be sure who else Facebook has invited to the party, and whether these unknown guests can be trusted.

This week there was a minor dust-up about our friends' phone numbers being exposed to strangers. On Wednesday the official Facebook page explained that the feature has been i...

Google will start to populate individual users' search results with posts that have been shared publicly by their connections on Google+, the company said Friday.

The new feature, which works only when users are signed in to their Google accounts, aims to tailor results to individual tastes. The idea is if a user posts a note on Google+ about a link--be it to a restaurant's Web site, a news story, or a retail store's site--their Google+ connections are going to be more likely to want to see th...

Gaming could be a major weapon in the growing social networking war:

Google+ took a big swing at its most prominent competitor this week when it added gaming to the fledgling site.

The new social network announced Thursday that it is gradually rolling out gaming capabilities to the site and adding highly popular games like Angry Birds. The rollout started Thursday, although the company didn't say how long it would take before the games would be available to all of its users.

The move to add game...

Microsoft and Google, never the best of friends, are starting to get nasty in their fight over whether enterprises should use Microsoft Exchange and Office, or move to Google Apps. Microsoft this week claimed that enterprises who move to Google Apps pay a hefty "Google Tax," while Google claims that businesses can save money and be more innovative by using Google Docs. Who's right?

Tom Rizzo, senior director of Microsoft Online Services, claims in his blog that enterprises pay a big Google Tax...

Google+, which is less than two months old, said Thursday afternoon that it's beginning to roll out a games button at the top of users' streams. The highly popular Angry Birds is one of the first games to be added to the site, along with Zombie Lane and Edgeworld.

Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google, announced the gaming news in a blog post. Gundotra noted that users will be able to click on a Games button that will be placed above their streams. The button takes them ...