Google has spent a significant amount of time over the past couple of years building a very impressive web browser, Chrome. By most accounts, it’s the fastest around, and isn’t system resource heavy, and those who use it seem to love it. But there’s a tiny little problem: Being the best product doesn’t matter when general users have no idea what the product even is. And I’m not talking about just the specific product, I’m talking about the product category. And I’m not talking about some crazy new tech, I’m talking about a web browser.

We’ve actually known since Google’s hilarious video this summer that plenty of normal people have absolutely no idea what a web browser really is, even though most use one on a daily basis. But today, Google has put together what can only be described as an extremely dumbed-down one minute video (below) and rudimentary website to attempt to explain to everyone once again exactly what a web browser is. And make no mistake, the undertone is clear: You should be using Chrome.

Generally you can trust the ads on Google to at least be safe. But that’s not the case right now for the top ad being served on the query “Firefox.”

The top ad says it is linking to “Firefox ® OfficiaI Sitе” at the URL www.mozilla.com/firefox/. And that is indeed the official Mozilla Firefox site. But the link actually goes to the much more sinister firefox.mozilla-now.com, a site that dishonestly tries to get users to pay up to $2.50/month for an ongoing subscription to “24/7 Expert Customer Support” (a screenshot of the landing page is below). The credit card provider is based in the Netherlands.

Even advanced users who hover over the link won’t know what’s up before they click, due to Google’s ad redirect URL.

Yoono, a nifty IE and Firefox plug-in that serves as both a social network aggregator and media hub, is launching a desktop version of their browser sidebar. Yoono basically aggregates and centralizes your online profiles, including IM tools like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and AIM as well as a wide variety of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed and more. The startup also recently launched the ability to share pages and video/images in addition to real-time search capabilities powered by OneRiot.

The new desktop app, which is available for both Windows and Mac, has the same experience as the browser add-on except in a standalone product. The app is powered by Mozilla’s cross platform xulrunner technology (the same technology Firefox is built on), which is refreshing considering all of the Adobe Air apps out there. Yoono says that using xulrunner made since giving its history as a Firefox add on and the ease of porting.

Earlier today Robin Wauters posted about Yahoo’s advertorial promotion of IE8 across Yahoo sites. “Get The New, Safer IE8,” says the message, which Robin viewed via Firefox 3.

Does Yahoo consider IE8 safer than Firefox? Not if you visit the German Yahoo, which promotes Firefox 3.5 (a tragedy of a browser) by saying “Schneller und smarter: Der neue Firefox 3.5″ (translation: “Faster and smarter: The new Firefox 3.5″).

A year ago, when Yahoo and Microsoft were at war, Yahoo promoted Firefox to IE users.

So what browser is safest and fastest? As Robin said, “Apparently, Yahoo recommends browsers based on what their latest business alliances are.”

Not sure when this started occurring exactly, but Yahoo is apparently now letting Firefox users know that they’d be better off switching to the “new, safer Internet Explorer 8″. Apart from this tweet sent out yesterday, we haven’t noticed anyone noticing, so we suspect it’s fresh and a direct result of the recent Yahoo and Microsoft love-fest.

How ironic. About a year ago, following a failed acquisition attempt by Microsoft, Yahoo ran a very different recommendation from their front page, advising Internet Explorer users to switch to the “NEW safer, faster Firefox 3″ instead.

Firefox 3.5, which we’ve ranted about recently, is not playing nicely with Twitter. In fact, for the last week at least users (including me, including today) have had a lot of problems updating status messages and following new people if they use Firefox 3.5. The site just hangs forever.

Twitter knows about the issue and says they’re working on it. And the odd thing is that the issue seems to come and go.

The worst part about this is that Twitter was actively promoting Firefox 3.5 downloads in July, and a lot of Twitter users are probably using it. This version of Firefox alone has around 4.5% market share already.

Marc Andreessen is backing a new browser company called RockMelt. Not much is known about RockMelt other than it is being designed by an all-star team (including software engineer Robert John Churchill from the Netscape days) and that it is tied into Facebook through Facebook Connect. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb has a screenshot of the sign-in page and speculates that RockMelt is in fact a Facebook browser. Miguel Helft at the NYT leans in that direction as well. It kind of makes sense since Andreesen is on the board of Facebook, but I suspect it is only half the story.

A Facebook browser, however, is a good metaphor for thinking about how browsers, in general, need to change. What would a Facebook browser look like? Well, to start with, you would be able to see updates from your friends on Facebook, share your own updates and media right from the browser, and perhaps IM with your friends through Facebook chat. While those set of features would be convenient, they are nothing revolutionary. Flock, which calls itself the social browser, already incorporates Facebook Connect (and Twitter and other social networks to boot), but it hasn’t taken off. And Facebook itself offers a toolbar for Firefox that lets you see notifications, search Facebook, and share links. There are plenty of other Firefox add-ons which incorporate Facebook features as well.

But the Facebook connection may just be the starting point for a much more ambitious piece of software.

Ever since the new Firefox 3.5 came out about a month ago, I’ve been using it as my main browser. Generally I am very happy with it. Pages load a lot faster than they did before, the plus-sign feature in tabs which launches a new one is a godsend, and I am very excited about the prospects for all of the open video technologies built into it. But there is one persistent bug that might push me to another browser: it keeps crashing on me.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser is about to hit a major milestone: 1 billion total downloads. As you can see on this Twitter account set up to monitor the download numbers, it just crossed the 999,000,000 threshold earlier today. Judging by the rate at which it’s increasing, it could hit the milestone as early as tomorrow.

And Mozilla is preparing for the big day with a new site (not live yet), called www.onebillionplusyou.com, which will go live on Monday. There, you’ll find information about the one billion downloads Firefox has seen, we’re told. When the browser hits the milestone, more information should also be available here.

The new browser wars on on. More than a decade after Microsoft killed off Netscape with Internet Explorer, competition in the browser market has never been stronger. Just last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5, which has now been downloaded nearly 14 million times. Earlier in June, Apple released Safari 4. In March, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 8, and Google came out with a speedier beta of its Chrome browser.

Some early data is coming in showing relative market share and how fast people are upgrading. If you look at the chart above from Statcounter, it indicates that since March Internet Explorer has lost 11.4 percent market share to other browsers.

In the first 24 hours since its release yesterday, Firefox 3.5 has been downloaded more than 5 million times. (It took only a few hours to pass a million). That is certainly respectable, but doesn’t quite measure up to the mania that Firefox 3.0 set off last summer, when it achieved a “world record” 8.3 million downloads in a single day. Maybe we’ll have to wait for Firefox 4.0 to beat that record. But Firefox 3.5 might still beat the 11 million downloads Safari 4 got over its first three days of availability.

Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I’ve been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing (”What, you just figured that out?”). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack.

Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory.

Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 into the wild. Not surprisingly, it’s flying off the virtual shelves. And unlike when Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 last year, its servers are staying up and reliable, so the rate of downloads is pretty incredible. This site, run by Mozilla, shows the download stats for the new browser. Overall downloads are now approaching 1.3 million worldwide, with over 350,000 of those in the U.S. But even more amazing is the number of downloads occurring each second, it’s ranging from 59 to 95 right now. Again, that’s every second.

Outside of the U.S., the browser is moving quickly in Germany, France and the UK. The claim is that it’s much faster than the previous iterations of Firefox, and based on just a quick run-through of my favorite sites, I’d say that is in fact the case. Though, to be fair, it’s hard to know if that has something to do with the fact that just about all my browser plugins are not yet working with this version.

Yesterday, we poked fun at Microsoft’s tacky $10,000 online treasure hunt to get people to use IE8, at the domain TenGrandIsBuriedHere.com. We were hardly the only ones. Today, a developer at Mozilla, makers of IE rival Firefox, weighed in with his own way of mocking Microsoft: TenGrandIsBuriedThere.com.

The site is simply a Google Map zoomed out to a certain point. If you zoom in enough, you’ll find a surprise. The developer took exception to Microsoft calling Firefox “old” on its site. That is a bit odd since IE is much older than Firefox.

Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, was in New York City today and dropped by my office to talk about Firefox 3.5, which is now officially being rolled out as a “preview” version (a very stable beta) to everyone using the current 3.5 beta. Firefox 3.5 is supposedly much faster than earlier versions, which is always a good thing. Honestly, the nanosecond speed differences between most of today’s latest browsers is becoming hard to detect. Three features of Firefox 3.5 which stand out for me are: 1) its embrace of open-source video standards, 2) its geo-location capabilities, and 3) support for downloadable fonts and other graphic tricks.

Mozilla has unveiled a new project from its Labs division called Jetpack that gives us a taste of how Firefox might begin extending web functionality in years to come. While the project is still quite early in development, it seems to be taking the form of a streamlined extension system, allowing web developers to introduce new features to the Firefox browser using web-based tools and requiring only a minimal amount of effort on the user’s part.

Firefox extensions have long been one of the best parts of the browser, allowing users to add and remove features to suit their needs. But while the user experience of installing these has been relatively straightforward, it still requires a browser reboot, which can be frustrating when you’re in the middle of something. With Jetpack, this isn’t an issue – you click install and you’re done, with the new widget or application installed a few seconds later.

After the slightly shaky launch of their ultra-early milestone one release, Mozilla is back with more Fennec (otherwise known as “Firefox Mobile”) goodness. This morning, the company began distributing Alpha 1 of Fennec for Windows Mobile. As with all Alphas, this release is by no means intended for every day use by the general public, but it gives us a sneak peak at what’s to come.

Chrome is a great browser for Google’s web apps because its JavaScript engine is optimized to run most of them as fast as possible. That alone is reason enough for heavy users of applications like Gmail and Google Reader to use Chrome (if you have a PC anyway — the Mac version is still forthcoming). But Google may also be giving another small advantage to those who surf the web on Chrome: The ability to see new features early.

Earlier tonight we received a tip with the screenshots below. As you can see, Google Finance has a brand new interface when browsed to with Chrome versus in Internet Explorer and also Firefox (not pictured). It would seem that Google may be checking for the Chrome user agent and giving those users a glimpse at this new version of Google Finance.

Location-based services haven’t yet caught fire, but location itself is increasingly finding its way to web services as a complimentary feature. The latest to use it is the Google Toolbar. If you have it installed, and open Google Maps, it will now auto-center on your location.

That’s a small, but useful feature, but the ramifications of this move are potentially much large. This adds location capabilities to the millions of people who have Google Toolbar installed. You may be thinking that a lot of those users with the latest version of Firefox already had it — but this feature is for Internet Explorer only right now. That, combined with Mozilla’s use of its Geode location plug-in (which again, is built into the latest version of Firefox), puts location on a good percentage of browsers in the world.

Today, Mozilla Labs released the 0.3 version of Weave, its project that syncs multiple browsers in the cloud. Weave lets users sync their bookmarks, tabs, passwords, and histories in the cloud across Firefox browsers on different computers. With today’s release, you can also sync with Fennec, Firefox’s mobile browser, which unfortunately right now only works on one kind of phone: a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Yeah, I don’t have one of those either.

But the idea of syncing your browsers is a powerful one for anyone who uses more than one computing device on a regular basis. Originally launched in December, 2007, Weave is now faster and more reliable. In other words, now it actually works (or so I’m told).

The one thing Weave doesn’t sync is all of your add-ons. But that is planned for a future release.