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.

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.

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%.

The Chrom dev team have finally released early builds of Google Chrome for Mac.

The builds, which are still only in the dev channel, is now stable on Mac, but is still lacking features with the dev team not recommending the browser for every day use.

“Google Chrome for Mac OS X Developer Release is a very early release version and does not yet have some of the functionality that a full general release version would have. Many of the features still under development affect the privacy behavior of Google Chrome for Mac OS X. The issues marked in bold text below will be resolved prior to releasing Google Chrome for Mac OS X to the beta channel for broader consumer use” says the note from Google.

A download link is available from the Early Access Release Channels on the Chromium website.

Google has fixed 3 Chrome security holes, two which were rated as high severity, and the other as medium.

The first issue was in the V8 JavaScript engine, which could “allow specially-crafted Javascript on a web page to read unauthorized memory, bypassing security checks.”

The second issue allows poorly formed XML to crash the browser tab. “A malicious XML payload may be able to trigger a use-after-free condition. Other tabs are unaffected.”

The final bug could allow “sites whose certificates are signed using MD2 or MD4 hashing algorithms … to spoof an invalid site as a valid HTTPS site.”

Thankfully, none of these risks were rated as critical thanks to Google Chrome’s sandbox environment. The update will be pushed out to all current Chrome users.

Google Chrome 4.0.202.2 is now completely 64 bit compatible, and no longer uses any 32 bit libraries and is available for Linux.

“The v8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port.  After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I’ve had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks” said Google Chrome Software Engineer Dean McNamee.

The new builds can be downloaded from here, with build instructions also being available for Linux users.

A Windows and Mac version are set to follow.

Google is planning on adding cloud-based bookmark and password sync using ‘push’ technology for its Chrome browser.

Users will need a Google Account (such as Gmail), which will be used to store bookmarks and passwords.  This will allow browsers to have their preferences available on any computer when they enter their details in any Chrome browser around the world.

“A bunch of us have been working on a feature to sync user data in Chromium with a Google account. The great news is that we’ll be starting to work directly in the Chromium project this week.” explained Chrome developer Tim Steele.

“We have built a library that implements the client side of our sync protocol, as well as the Google server-side infrastructure to serve Google Chrome users and synchronise data to their Google Account.”

“Rather than only depending on periodically polling for updates, when a change occurs on one Google Chrome client, a part of the infrastructure effectively sends a tiny XMPP message, like a chat message, to other actively connected clients telling them to sync.”

No details on when we will see this in Chrome have been announced.

Web browser market share results for July 2009 have been released thanks to Market Share by Net Applications, and for another month Microsoft Internet Explorer is down again.

Internet Explorer dropped almost half a percent to 67.68%, while Firefox was up 0.04% to 22.47%.

Other winners for the month were were Safari up from 3.79% to 4.07%, and Google Chrome up from 2.40% to 2.59%.

Opera had another bad month falling from 2.03% to 1.97%.

Interesting results for Firefox, with the release of 3.5 seems to have failed at attracting any more market share. Full results for June and July 2009 are available online.