This past November, Microsoft’s web browser, Internet Explorer (IE), saw its market share fall below 70 percent for the first time, according to data from Market Share. And the numbers look worse for the limited data from December so far, with IE now accounting for 68.15 percent of web browsers, The Dallas Morning News points out.

Now, that’s still a huge share — over three times larger than the second most popular web browser, Mozilla’s Firefox, which has 21.34 percent — but there’s an undeniable trend that IE is losing ground, and pretty quickly. In early 2007, the browser had an 80 percent market share. By early 2008 it was down to 75 percent, but by the time the early 2009 numbers come it could well be near 65 percent, since the rate of loss is clearly increasing.

Meanwhile, Firefox’s share is at its highest levels ever, Apple’s Safari browser is also at its highest level ever (just about eight percent in December 2008), and guess who else is rising fast? Google’s Chrome browser. The early numbers for December have it on pace to surpass a one percent share for the first time — and that’s with no Mac support, something which will change in 2009.

All of these players are not-so-slowly whittling away at Internet Explorer’s lead — and for good reason, it’s simply not a very good browser, and it hasn’t been for a long time. Back in 2004, IE controlled well over 90 percent of the market. Those days are long gone.

I’ve been using Camino, Mozilla’s open source web browser built especially for the Mac, for quite some time now. I simply love its speed, simplicity and look in a world where its sibling browser Firefox is getting overrun with bloated plug-ins. And today Camino gets even better with the first beta release of Camino 2.0.

So what’s new? Well, under the hood, Camino is now running version 1.9 of Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. I’ve been using Camino 2 since the alpha stages, and I can definitely say that performance, which was already great, seems even better.

But many of you will care more about the more visible changes to Camino 2. While the browser doesn’t look a lot different (since it’s so bareboned to beging with), there are some notable new features. The first is that you can finally drag and reshuffle tabs. All the other major browsers have had this for a while, so it’s about time it came to Camino. Also new is the tab overview feature (see below). Users of the Opera web browser may have grown to love this feature, which gives you a thumbnail view of all your open tabs in one window, and now it’s here in Camino. It’s great for some one like me who has no less than 10 tabs open across two screens at any given time.

Users of Firefox will also welcome the “Recently Closed Pages” menu to Camino for pages that you just had open and perhaps didn’t mean to close. Camino 2 also offers better zoom features and the ability tailor which sites you want to block Flash animations for. Still built in to Camino is the ability to block all advertisements.

While there may be no one Earth-shattering change, Camino 2 looks like a better version of the current Camino 1.6.6 in every way. That said, this is still a beta version of the browser, so use it at your own risk.

Users of Camino will also be happy to know that the team’s project lead, Mike Pinkerton, is currently also working on Chrome, Google’s web browser, for the Mac platform. Progress is being made on it (though slowly) and it should be done at some point in the coming months. Until then, it’ll be Camino-only browsing for me.

Find Camino 2.0 beta 1 available for download here.

Here’s the latest action:

Yahoo flushes its “poison pill” — One of the reasons Microsoft decided not to go hostile in its bid to buy Yahoo was that the company had a so-called “poison pill” plan in place in which hundreds of millions of dollars would have likely been due to employees who left due to their unhappiness with any Microsoft/Yahoo merger. A few Yahoo shareholders decided to sue the company to remove this plan, and today the company has settled that suit by drastically altering the plan so that compensation would only be granted to those who are basically demoted in any future merger or acquisition deal, The New York Times Bits blog reports.

This news comes on a day when Yahoo laid off more than 1,500 workers. The company is also still seeking a new chief executive following Jerry Yang’s decision to step down. If some company, let’s make up one called Icrosoft-May, were to want to do a deal, it might be an opportune time.

Crain’s shutters its print version — The financial weekly will now only exist online, following a trend that we’re starting to see among the previously powerful print publications. PaidContent has more.

WordPress hopes “Coltrane” is a love supreme — The blogging platform which powers some of the biggest blogs on the web (and this one as well) has released the 2.7 version of its software which it is calling “Coltrane.” It has a completely new interface and claims to make tasks a few clicks faster. Hey admins, can we upgrade?

Latest Firefox beta has multi-touch support — Mozilla’s Firefox 3.1 beta 2 supports gestures similar to the ones that users of Mac laptops (which feature multi-touch in the newer trackpads) are accustomed to with the Safari web browser. But there are some other interesting gestures as well such as “Twist Right” and “Twist Left” for previous and next tabs. MacRumors has more.

CBSNews.com and CNET newsrooms to merge, with layoffs — CBS Inactative, which bought CNET earlier this year will merge its newsroom with CBSNews.com’s, according to paidContent. Layoffs are coming as well, though it’s not yet clear how many.

MySpace launches a new toolbar for browsers — This internally developed project will give users real time alerts and notifications from the social network. It will work on IE 6.0 or higher as well as Firefox 2.0 or higher. There is no Mac support yet, but it’s coming. Social network addicts rejoice. MarketWatch has more.

Apple firmware update fixes newer MacBooks — Users had been having issues with the new notebooks trackpads should find those resolved. CNET has more.

Sequoia RIP presentation inspired by former Stanford University chief — Sequoia partner Michael Goguen says that the entire presentation was the outgrowth of a Sequoia partners meeting with Eric Upin, the former Stanford University investment chief who joined Sequoia earlier this year to launch an asset management organization (think a smaller version of Makena Capital). Upin laid out such a startling economic forecast that Sequoia’s venture capitalists felt their portfolio companies needed to be informed ASAP. peHUB has the full story.

Here’s the latest action:

Increase in joblessness spurs stock decline — After the Labor Department reported that applications for jobless benefits exceeded expectations, the Dow fell more than 80 points.

Reviews surface on BlackBerry Storm — CNET’s verdict: The touchscreen is nice, but corporate users are better served by the BlackBerry Bold.

AT&T funds privacy nonprofit — The Future of Privacy’s backing from the telecom giant is just one reason why GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham is skeptical that the nonprofit group actually has consumers’ privacy in mind.

Amazon creates mysterious online ad company — The connection between Amazon and Adzina was just discovered by TechFlash, but an Amazon spokesperson says Adzina has actually been around for a year. Earlier this week, Amazon also launched its content distribution network, dubbed CloudFront.

Christmas apps growing fast on Facebook — Even though Thanksgiving isn’t even here yet, it looks like some Facebook users can’t wait for Santa to arrive.

Qik and Strands lay off 10 percent of staff — Social recommendation service Strands let go of 14 employees, while mobile video company Qik laid off five people.

Virgin Mobile may get de-listed from New York Stock Exchange – The mobile company doesn’t meet the NYSE’s criteria because its market cap has fallen below $100 million.

European venture investment has second-lowest quarter on record — A slump in IT deals accounted for much of the decline.

Sony loses a patent suit on PlayStation Portable — A Texas jury said the PSP violates Agere Systems’ patent on storing music headers on a memory chip and awarded Agere $18.5 million.

IRS auditing Mozilla’s nonprofit status — At issue is how to classify the money Mozilla receives from Google, which made up a whopping 88 percent of Mozilla’s revenue in 2008.

Microsoft lets Zune owners keep 10 songs permanently for subscription fee — The move is supposed to tempt users who are hesitant to rent their music instead of buying it outright.

Can anyone save Yahoo? — As the company searches for someone to replace chief executive Jerry Yang, Yahoo faces a “triple whammy” of strong competition, an economic downturn and a falling stock price.

EA closes mysterious Blueprint division — EA never made an official announcement about the division, but it was known that the studio’s purpose was to deliver original intellectual property.

With the launch of a new site called Fashion Your Firefox, Mozilla is pushing to make normal users more aware of the add-ons available for its Firefox web browser.

There are already plenty of ways to find new add-ons (software you install to add features to your browser, such as a mini map sidebar or a space to get twitter updates). There’s a semi-comprehensive listing of add-ons on the Mozilla web site, as well as a recommendation window you can bring up in the browser itself. But both options seem better suited for users who know about and are interested in add-ons already. Fashion Your Firefox, on the other hand, is pitched at the mainstream. Instead of trying to list a broad range of add-ons to meet every possibly need, the site focuses on a relatively small number of categories (such as “social butterfly”, “digital pack rat” and “decorator”), then singles out just a few add-ons within each one.

Fashion Your Firefox could be a good introduction for users who want to dip their toes into the add-on world. They can find and download some of the best offerings, then if they like their improved browsers, they can go elsewhere to dig deeper.

Something like this is definitely needed to bring add-ons to a broader audience. Mozilla reports 1 billion Firefox add-on downloads so far, but anecdotally, it doesn’t feel like the concept has taken off among casual users. I don’t know anyone who has more than a few add-ons installed. I have to install plenty of add-ons so I can write about them, I uninstall them just as infrequently to keep things uncluttered.

When VentureBeat covers startups whose main product is a browser add-on, we invariably ask about the limited audience. It’s also worth noting that recent announcements from two companies featured on Fashion Your Firefox, as well as in Mozilla’s announcement, involve reaching a bigger audience than the add-on crowd: Discovery service StumbleUpon no longer requires an add-on, while Cooliris can bring its 3D media browsing experience to any website as an embeddedable wall.

I have some quibbles with how Fashion Your Firefox works right now. For one thing, there should be a prominent link to Mozilla’s full add-on listings so there’s an easy transition to the broader range of software out there. And maybe it doesn’t need the promotion, but I was disappointed at the absence of Google Gears, which I consider the most powerful add-on of all. Lastly, a newbie-friendly site like this one can’t completely overcome the fact that users hesitate before installing new software.

Nonetheless, if I was an add-on developer, I’d be doing whatever I could to get listed on the site.

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser surpassed 20 percent worldwide market share for the first time last month, according to new data from Net Applications. That’s a huge milestone for the open source web browser, which was first released (the 1.0 version) by Mozilla almost exactly four years ago (November 9, 2004), at a time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had a choke-hold over the web browsing industry with a market share well over 90 percent.

Today, Firefox is firmly the second most popular browser out there. It continues to gain share even at a time when other companies are releasing new browsers on a wide range of new devices. Apple, for example, has seen great growth in mobile web browsing on its Safari web browser built for the iPhone. Meanwhile, gaming systems like Sony’s Playstation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii have web browsers built in as well (the PS3’s is built by NetFront, while the Wii’s is built by Opera).

And of course, Google, a huge financial backer of Mozilla’s work on the web, has recently entered the web browser wars with its own Chrome browser.

But all of those other browsers, along with Firefox, seem to be taking share away from Internet Explorer, which continues to sink in the 70 percent share range (currently around 71 percent according to Net Applications). Microsoft let Internet Explorer stagnate after version 6 was released in 2001. Version 7 didn’t come out until 5 years later, and by that time, Firefox easily had it bested in terms of both speed and features.

While maybe not terribly relevant, It’s worth noting that a lot of tech blogs out there have long since seen Firefox overtake Internet Explorer as the dominant browser of choice among readers. ReadWriteWeb noted earlier that over 55 percent of its visitors use Firefox (versus just 27 percent for Internet Explorer). Our visitors aren’t quite as Firefox-loving, but still easily make up the largest percentage of visitors (44.6 percent to IE’s 36.5 percent).

The latest version of Firefox, 3, was released back in June. Mozilla continues to improve it, recently adding features such as built-in geolocation.

Well it didn’t take long for Mozilla to build support for geolocation directly in to the Firefox web browser. Just a week after it officially launched the Geode plug-in for Firefox 3.0, Mozilla today launched Firefox 3.1 beta 1, which eliminates the need for the plug-in. I had a chance to talk with one company that is particularly excited about this functionality, Outside.in, makers of the location-based news and information service Radar.

Up until recently, Radar had been asking its users to manually input their location (via zip code or city name) to gather local news and information around them. With the launch of Yahoo Fire Eagle, things got a little bit easier as the geolocation platform could pull your location from some other service and feed it to Radar. Still, that required your location information come from somewhere else. Now, that information can come right from your web browser.

When Outside.in first saw Geode last week, the team know it was “a perfect fit,” Outside.in co-founder John Geraci told me. The team had been working on other things, but immediately jumped on implementing the geolocation application programming interface (API) and had it working within hours.

Now, if you’re in a city other than your home one with your laptop, you can simply open Radar’s site and be fed local information. And this functionality gives Geraci hope for the future too. He knows that mobile is quickly becoming a widely-used computing platform and while certain devices like the iPhone 3G and other smartphones have location sensing capabilities built-in, not everyone has an iPhone. (Though, Outside.in just finished the Radar iPhone app and it should be out soon.)

When the mobile version of Firefox launches, geolocation will be a part of it and that means access to Windows Mobile devices among others. Outside.in is also evaluating working on Google’s Android mobile platform, which also has location-sensing capabilities, but will watch to see how quickly it catches on first.

Outside.in raised $3 million back in May to expand Radar.

Other services that already work with Firefox 3.1’s geolocation include the social message and file sending service Pownce. Expect a lot more to follow as location continues to become a part of the web with mobile and desktop computing colliding.

Poor Geode, it only lasted a week before it was basically rendered obsolete. (But who knows how long Firefox 3.1 will be in beta.) Mozilla laid out the main difference between the plug-in Geode and the built-in geolocation in last week’s post:

Geode and the Geolocation Services in Firefox 3.1 will use the same W3C API for Geolocation, meaning that the same Javascript code will work in both. The still-in-developement Firefox 3.1 version will allow the user to choose a geolocation service provider, which can either be a peripheral device like a GPS, or a web-based service provider like we’ve used in Geode.

Location is a hot field in mobile computing. It makes sense — you’re on the move, and newer phones such as the Apple iPhone and T-Mobile’s Android-based G1 have global positioning systems (GPS) built-in. So mobile applications are being built in droves to use location, but web-based apps are largely being left out of the trend. Mozilla hopes to change that tomorrow, however, with the launch of Geode, its location web browser plug-in.

The plug-in will work with the Firefox browser. I’ve seen it in action and it works well. It’s not entirely clear how it’s pulling in the location data, but I assume it’s using either something similar to the Wi-Fi triangulation that the original iPhone used (before it had a GPS chip) or your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) information.

One product Geode certainly makes sense for is Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, its developer platform for location. Sites Dopplr, Dipity, Pownce and Brightkite all have signed up to use Fire Eagle to pipe in location information into their apps. Right now, that location still needs to be put in manually in the web browser, but that should change with the Geode plug-in. You’ll be able to pinpoint your exact location, neighborhood, city or turn it off. If you check the box labeled “Always do this without asking,” it’ll automatically pull whatever data you specified.

One potential hang up in Fire Eagle simply integrating Geode itself is that Yahoo has some sort of beef with the W3C, we’ve heard. The W3C is the consortium that develops interoperable technologies for the web. Geode is built off of the W3C’s Geolocation API Specification.

Since early on in its testing phase, I found Joost to be a compelling take on Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Let me rephrase: I found the idea of Joost to be compelling. It offered free video content on the web in a way that was somewhat similar to a television experience but added the interactivity that the web offers. The service’s problem was in its execution — namely that it required a seperate desktop client to use. That will soon no longer be the case.

Joost will cease making its desktop client and shift strategy to making its content available within the web browser, GigaOM’s Om Malik has learned. The new strategy apparently will call for a browser plug-in that will allow the service to continue using peer-to-peer (P2P) approach to distribute content.

The problem with this shift in strategy now is that there is a major player already doing what Joost intends to do: The NBC and Fox-backed Hulu. Hulu has had a few months head start to gain users and steam and simply kills Joost in terms of content. Whereas Joost has some compelling shows from stations like MTV and Comedy Central, Hulu has the big hit shows from NBC, Fox and others. It has several feature films as well.

Joost still has a small window of opportunity however as Hulu is still only available to web users in the United States.

The other problem is that by using a plug-in, Joost is still limiting its potential audience. A plug-in likely means Joost will be meant to work in Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browsers. While these are by far and away the two most dominant browsers, not everyone uses them. Further, not everyone is going to want to download a plug-in for them. Hulu doesn’t require a plug-in, just Adobe Flash, which is already standard on almost all computers.

So while this move to the browser is a smart play for Joost, it in no way insures success. The company took a gamble on a desktop client and lost. Joost’s model could also run into problems if other Internet service providers (ISPs) start following Comcast’s lead and putting caps on data downloads.

Still, IPTV is still a young market and Joost has some options. While we’ve known since March that a browser-based version of Joost was in the works, something else that was talked about that I found compelling was the possibility of live sporting events on Joost.

I would also recommend that Joost tries to get on one of the living room boxes such as Roku, quick. I think Joost realizes that, hence why we saw them as a partner on Yahoo’s upcoming Widget Channel, which will bring Internet content to televisions in the living room.

Joost, which was started by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (two of the men behind Skype), raised $45 million in funding back in May of 2007. The lead investors were Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. CBS Corporation, Viacom and the foundation of Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing also participated,

Google’s new browser Chrome is amazing. How amazing? So much so that I’ve booted Microsoft Windows on my iMac two days in a row now after not using it for months. (Chrome isn’t yet available for Mac OS X, more on that below.) Does Chrome have some bugs and issues? Sure, but in terms of everyday experience I feel like I can safely say it’s the best browsing experience I’ve had on Windows since the day I switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox several years ago.

But that’s the big problem, Chrome currently only works on Windows. Google promises that both a Mac and Linux version are coming but refuses to give any indication of when that will be. That’s disheartening for us Mac users, but I have good news today.

Mike Pinkerton, the project lead for Mozilla’s Camino Project is working on bringing Chrome to the Mac for Google, he confirmed on his blog. (Pinkerton is a Google employee who does Camino on the side.) Camino is the open source web browser that was built by Mozilla team members specifically for the Mac.

Mozilla, of course, also makes the Firefox web browser, which also runs on Macs. But up until the recent version 3 release, Firefox had become increasingly bloated and cumbersome running in Apple’s OS X environment. Camino was the opposite. It’s very light weight and very quick. It doesn’t offer any of the extensions that Firefox has, but it renders pages extremely well using the Gecko rendering engine.

With Chrome, Pinkerton is switching gears and developing a browser using the WebKit engine. While at first Pinkerton admitted apprehension to switching sides as it were, he lays his thoughts out well in his post:

“I was worried for so long about what I’d say about all this and how it would be perceived and how I’d have to spin it and yadda yadda yadda, but I realized today that it’s really just about building great software and being a part of a group of people who want to make the web better, faster, safer, and easier. To move the web forward. It doesn’t matter if you’re at Google, Apple, Mozilla, or even Microsoft.”

Pinkerton has a long history in developing web browsers. He worked at Netscape in the 1990s and then teamed up with developer Dave Hyatt to make Camino. Hyatt, who Pinkerton refers to as “jinglepants” and mentions in his post, went on to work for Apple and helped develop the Safari browser — which also runs on WebKit. It seems the two will now be reunited under the WebKit roof.

Pinkerton also notes that The Camino Project will move forward. And he’ll still be at the helm. He promises that Camino version 2.0 based on Gecko 1.9 is very much underway and that alpha build status is drawing near.

This will however, likely raise more questions about Mozilla’s and Google’s relationship. Google supports Mozilla financially in exchange for benefits like Google search residing on Firefox’s default homepage. The release of Chrome raised questions about just how much Google would continue to support Mozilla, though the two sides did just recently renew their pact for 3 years.

Pinkerton’s involvement in Chrome is great news for Mac users. If you’ve never tried out Camino, give it a spin here. This team did web browsing right and now that looks as if it’ll be translated into Chrome when it launches for the Mac.

[Hat tip to Twitter user Jimmy Gleason for pointing this out.]