Private browsing will now extend to the Flash plug-in with Flash Player 10.1 Adobe have announced.

“Integrating with your web browser, Flash Player 10.1 will automatically clear stored data in accordance with your browser’s private browsing settings” said Adobe Engineer Jimson Xu.

Flash Player 10.1 supports private browsing with Internet Explorer 8+, Mozilla Firefox 3.5+, and Google Chrome 1.0+, with Apple’s Safari 2.0+support coming soon.

Missing from this list is Opera, which has only recently included private browsing in the latest 10.50 alpha release.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is currently in Beta and is expected in the first half of this year. Beta 2 can be downloaded from Adobe Labs.

Google has pushed out version 5 of Chrome to the dev channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Not much has changed so far, but Windows versions will now use the default download folder for downloading files, while the Mac version is now more stable with extensions.

Linux versions now include support for desktop notifications, along with improved support for complex text such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Being development versions, they are prone to instability and crashes. There is currently one known bug in the Mac version, which will crash the browser when a user clears the cookies.

Users can jump on the dev channel version of Google Chrome by following instructions on the Chromium website.

Time appears to slowly be running out for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), as Google has announced plans to drop support for the browser in its Google Sites and Google Docs applications.

“Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers” said Google Apps Senior Product Manager Rajen Sheth.

Not to feel left out, Google is also dropping support for Firefox 2, Chrome 3, and Safari 2.

“While you’ll still be able to access these Google applications, newer features may not be available and some features may even stop working” said Sheth.

Support for these older browsers is due to end on March 1st. Web users are urged to upgrade their web browsers before this time.

Google has pushed out an update to its Chrome browser on Windows, taking it to version 4.0.249.78.

The update now includes extensions and bookmark sync in the stable version on Windows.

The update also addresses 11 security issues, 4 of which were rated as high severity, 2 medium, and 5 low.

New users can download Google Chrome from the Google Chrome website, while the update will be pushed out to existing Chrome users.

Google overnight has updated the development channel version Google Chrome, this time turning on extensions for Mac.

This is new version is in addition to the beta version, which Mac users have been able to test for the last few weeks.

Almost 1,400 extensions are currently available for Chrome users.

Mac users wanting to test out extensions can install the developer build of Google Chrome from the Chromium Developer website, noting that this is a development build and is prone to bugs.

Beta users of Google Chrome Mac will have to wait until current code migrates from the Dev to Beta channel to test out extensions.

With 2009 now over, it’s time to analyse web browser market share over the last 12 months.

It’s been a big year for web browsers, with Internet Explorer taking a massive loss, down from 75.18% share in December 2008, to 62.69% share in December 2009.

Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera were all big winners, ending the year up higher than they started.

Google Chrome has had such an impact that it now holds third place in the browser market, which has been held by Safari for the last number of years.

We have compiled a graph below to show you the browser movements over the last 12 months.

All data has been provided by Market Share by Net Applications.

With Chrome extensions having been available for one week now, we thought it would be good to take a look at the 10 most popular extensions for the week.

Collectively, these top 10 extensions have almost had just under 500,000 million downloads.

Google Mail Checker

With over 108,000 users, this extension displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. Clicking on the icon will open your inbox. Currently only gmail and googlemail domains work, so anyone using a personal domain with Google Apps is out. There is also a reported memory leak at this stage with some users suggesting the less popular (but just as good, if not better) Google Mail Checker Plus.

AdThwart

AdThwart has almost 70,000 users, with the extension blocking ads from websites, thus saving you bandwidth and valuable screen space. The ad filter list is constantly updated by the EasyList community.

Google Translate

With 63,000 users, Google Translate does exactly that – translates. Web pages can be translated into your chosen language with a single click. This extensions users Google Translate.

IE Tab

IE Tab has over 53,000 users and is of great use for web pages that do not load or open correctly in Google Chrome. As the name suggests, this extensions lets you open an Internet Explorer tab right in Google Chrome, without the need for changing browser.

Google Wave Notifier

This extension has almost 50,000 users, and is similar to the Google Mail Checker. With Google Wave Notifier you can see all your unread Waves, as well as accessing specific Waves with a single click. It’s also compatible with Waves setup on a Google Apps domain.

RSS Subscription Extension

RSS Subscription Extension has over 46,000 users, and allows users to subscribe to RSS feeds with a single click. 4 feed readers are defined by default (Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines and My Yahoo), but others can be added manually.

Xmark Bookmark Sync

With just under 40,000 users, this extension allows you to backup and sync bookmarks across computers and browsers. The extension is also available for Firefox, Safari, and IE.

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer

This extension has over 37,000 users and allows users to automatically preview both PDF and PowerPoint documents in Google Docs Viewer. This can save you lots of time, especially if the document is rather large.

AdBlock

Famous among Firefox users, AdBlock does what it says – it blocks ads from websites. The extension has over 36,000 users and the block list is automatically updated. This is the second ad blocker in the top ten.

Google Quick Scroll

Rounding out the top 10 is Google Quick Scroll, with almost 33,000 users. Google Quick Scroll lets users jump directly to the important bits when performing Google searches. After clicking on a search result, and when deemed to be useful, a small pop-up window appears showing one or more bits of the page that are relevant to your search. An obvious time saver!

That’s the top 10 extensions one week on, with extensions being available for Chrome Beta on Windows and Linux. Mac users unfortunately miss out at this point. Many, many more extensions can also be found on the Google Chrome Extensions website.

The Google Chrome team have pushed out a new update to Windows Google Chrome users.

The update is only minor, and corrects two bugs that caused the browser to crash. Full details can be found on the Google Chrome Releases blog.

As usual, the browser will automatically be pushed out to current Chrome users, or can be downloaded from the Google Chrome website.

Google Chrome Gmail Checker Extension

With the latest Beta releases of Google Chrome today, Google have also released Extensions Beta.

Available to Beta Chrome users on Windows and Linux (with Mac still in progress), over 300 extensions can be downloaded at today’s launch.

Extensions can let users check their Gmail, translate web pages into different languages, and watch eBay items all without the need to visit actual websites.

Extensions have flourished in Mozilla Firefox, otherwise known as add-ons, and have helped grow the browsers fan base.

The extensions are all free and can be downloaded from the Google Chrome Extensions website.

Google has finally released Chrome Beta for both Mac and Linux.

Version 4.0.249.30 has been promoted to the Beta channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Mac users who had a previous developer  build installed will automatically be moved to the Beta channel.

Chrome on Linux is integrated tightly with native GTX themes, while updates are managed by the standard system package manager.

Mac users will also notice that Chrome has a native Mac OS X graphical user interface.

Download links are below:

• Download Google Chrome Beta for Windows
• Download Google Chrome Beta for Mac
• Download Google Chrome Beta for Linux