Microsoft have come out publicly saying they are unhappy with Chrome Frame, as it will leave the browser open to twice as many vulnerabilities.

“Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take” said a Microsoft spokesperson.

Google has hit back, with the following statement.

“While we encourage users to use a more modern and standards compliant browser such as Firefox, Safari, Opera or Google Chrome rather than a plug-in, for those who don’t, Google Chrome Frame is designed to provide better performance, strong security features, and more choice to both developers and users, across all versions of Internet Explorer.”

“Accessing sites using Google Chrome Frame brings Google Chrome’s security features to Internet Explorer users, providing strong phishing and malware protection (absent in IE6), robust sandboxing technology, and defenses from emerging online threats that are available in days rather than months.”

That settles that – for now.

The Google Chrome development team have released a new tool called Google Chrome Frame.

“Google Chrome Frame is an early-stage open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome’s open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine” and currently works in Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8.

This plug-in would allow organisations to keep Internet Explorer 6, but still allow users to see pages that use HTML5 and advanced CSS features.

More information can be found on the Google Chrome Frame website.

Google has gone on record stating that they expect to release Google Chrome for Mac by the end of the year.

Chrome for Mac is currently available for testing on Mac, but lacks many privacy features and is not recommended for every day browsing. The Google Chrome team hope to have this sorted out before the year’s end.

Google is also looking at increasing its market share. “If at the two-year birthday we’re not at least 5 percent (market share), I will be exceptionally disappointed. And if at the three year birthday we’re not at 10 percent, I will be exceptionally disappointed,” said Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson.

The test version of Google Chrome for Mac can be downloaded from the Chromium website.

Overnight, Opera has released Opera Mini 5 beta 1, and includes many new features.

The browser, which is available for free on a wide variety of phones, now includes tabbed browsing, speed dial, support for both touch and keypad phones, and a password manager.

The preview browser can be downloaded directly to your mobile phone, or from the Opera Mini Next website.

Just after the first year of Google Chrome, Google has released Chrome 3.0.

The new release, with version number 3.0.195.21, includes a faster V8 JavaScript engine, a redesigned New Tab page, an improved Omnibox, Themes capability, and new HTML5 features.

Existing Chrome users will have the update pushed out to them, and for new users, the browser can be downloaded from the Google Chrome website.

The browser is quickly heading for a 4.0 release, which will finally include Mac and Linux versions.

Opera Mini 5 for mobiles is on it’s way, at least according to Opera’s Espen André Øverdahl.

Little information has been revealed, but a splash page has been put up on Opera Next, with the tag line “Coming very soon: The next generation in mobile browsing”.

We will let you know as more information and a beta is released.

Mozilla has updated both Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3 to close several security holes, 3 of which were rated as critical.

A full list of changes can be found in the Firefox 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14 release notes.

The update will be automatically pushed out to current users, or can be downloaded directly from the Firefox website.

Opera have announced that Opera 10 was downloaded over 10 million times in the first week since the browser was released.

An impressive feat for the company, but it seems small in size. Apple’s Safari 4 was downloaded 11 million times in 3 days, while Firefox 3.5 was downloaded over 5 million times in 24 hours.

More information can be read in the Opera press release.

Mozilla has posted a new roadmap, outlining the future for Firefox in the next 12 months. At this stage, Firefox 4.0 is due to hit somewhere between September and November 2010 according to the roadmap.

New features for Firefox 4 are said to include platform enhancements, including running tabs in separate processes, interface enhancements, and speed and responsiveness improvements.

Also on the roadmap are Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 3.7, due October or November 2009 and February or March 2010 respectively.

Firefox 3.6 is aiming to include Windows 7 enhancements, including Jump Lists and Aero Peak. The browser is also expected to include light weight themes (persona’s) and big improvements to the Tracemonkey JavaScript engine.

Firefox 3.7 is biggest draw card is each add-on will be placed in its own process, making the overall browser experience more stable (especially with poorly written add-on’s). This release should also see some form of bookmark syncronisation.

The next 12 months are looking bright for Firefox, with some great new features expected.

This months browser share statistics are out thanks to Market Share by Net Applications.

August has panned out like another typical month, with Internet Explorer dropping to 66.97% in August, from 67.68% in July.

Firefox jumped slightly to 22.98% from 22.47%, while Safari remained the same at 4.07%.

Google Chrome also increased its share from 2.59% to 2.84%, while Opera was also up from 1.97% to 2.04%.