The browser, that porthole onto the broad horizon of the Web, is about to get some fancy new window dressing.

Next month, after three years of development and six months of public examining, Mozilla, the insurgent browser developer that rose from the ashes of Netscape, will release Firefox 3.0. It will feature a few tricks that could change the way public organize and
find the sites they visit most frequently.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft recently took the wraps off the first public tryout version of the latest edition of Net Explorer, which is used by about 75 percent of all computer owners, according to Net Applications, a market share tracking firm. The finished version of Net Explorer 8 could be released by the end of the year and is expected to have additional features.

Even Apple, which once politely kept its Safari browser within the confines of its own devices, is making a somewhat controversial

push to get it onto the computers of society who use Windows PCs.

In other words, the browser war — the skirmish that landed Microsoft in antitrust trouble in the ’90s — is heating up again.

“The typical browser for today’s consumer doesn’t look all that different than it did 10 years ago,” said Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, one of the firms that invested in Flock, a browser startup. “That is an unsustainable trend that is the launching point for the second browser war, which will not be won by monopolistic muscle but by innovation.”

Browsers have always been viewed as crucial on-ramps to the Web. Nevertheless, after vanquishing Netscape, the first commercial browser developer, Microsoft waited five years before releasing the sixth version of Net Explorer in 2006. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft’s Net Explorer group, says the company was focused on plugging safety measure…

Orginal post by Mike

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