A few years ago we moved our company completely off of Internet Explorer to Firefox because you wrote in your column that IE had security holes and lacked speed. Our IT Services provider has told us that IE9 has solved all the pitfalls of previous versions, it’s the safest yet, and there are many business-oriented sites that are much friendlier to IE. So is it OK to go back?

A:

I haven’t done a comparative browser review in a while, but I do agree that Internet Explorer has improved tremendously in speed, security and features. I think IE9 is a good browser and a reasonable choice, assuming you are a 100% Windows shop. IE is the only major browser that lacks a Mac version.

Some caveats: Each of the major browsers has improved, and, by some measures, some competitors beat IE in speed. A new, fast-rising contender since I wrote that old column is Google’s Chrome, which I find to be fast and reliable. IE’s market share, while still the highest, has shrunk dramatically and the browser market is more balanced. Finally, the number of business-oriented sites that require or do better in IE has been greatly reduced from, say, five years ago.

Earlier this week, Google and Mozilla said they had struck a deal to renew their search royalty agreement for another three years.

What the pair declined to add: The search giant will pay just under $300 million per year to be the default choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, a huge jump from its previous arrangement, due to competing interest from both Yahoo and Microsoft.

Sources said this total amount — just under $1 billion — was the minimum revenue guarantee for delivering search queries garnered from consumers using Firefox.

Google’s main rival in the bid, sources said, was Microsoft’s Bing search service, which was aggressively trying to hip-check it from the main search spot on the browser.

That’s because the software giant has been spending a lot of money in efforts to grow Bing’s market share in the search market.

Microsoft, of course, also owns the still-dominant Internet Explorer browser, but Google’s Chrome has recently been making major gains over both IE and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Still, Mozilla’s recent negotiations with both companies was about search market share.

Yahoo was also in the mix, even though Microsoft powers its search technology, because a hookup with Firefox was considered a plus in holding on to its declining search market share.

But the deal, which was being pushed hard by Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving and its search head Shashi Seth, was determined to be too costly for Yahoo.

Costly indeed, since the new price is much higher than Google had previously ponied up to Mozilla. In 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the partnership had expired at the end of November, and the new talks were done against a backdrop of simmering tension between Google and Mozilla over Chrome.

As Liz Gannes wrote earlier this week:

Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Even with the new default deal with Google, Mozilla still also has partnerships with other search providers, including Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Of course, everybody declined to comment on my queries to hand over all the financial deets stat.

But Google’s SVP of Search, Alan Eustace, said in a statement: “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come.”

Great, perhaps, but also much more expensive — so presumably Firefox is worth it.

Mozilla is set to announce that it has signed a new three-year agreement for Google to be the default search option in its Firefox browser.

It’s a critical renewal for the Silicon Valley software maker, since its earlier deal with the search giant has been a major source of revenue to date.

The companies said the specific terms of the commercial agreement are not being released. But, in 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the arrangement had expired at the end of November. Mozilla said at the time that it was in “active negotiations” with Google.

The relationship has not been without some tension of late. Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Mozilla also has partnerships with other search providers, including Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Here’s the full announcement Mozilla will soon put out:

Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox

We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The specific terms of the commercial agreement are confidential and are not being released.

This is part of a user sign-in feature that is now part of the stable Chrome 16 release, which came out Wednesday. The main intent of the feature is to help people sync their bookmarks across multiple devices, and to separate saved passwords and extensions for multiple people who use a single computer.

(And, of course, some day these Chrome profiles may well be tied into that whole unified Google+ identity system they’re attempting to pull off.)

But, oh man, this could have a greater and more immediate effect on those of us who have personal Gmail accounts and professional Google Apps accounts.

If you use a different email provider, or prefer desktop mail clients, this may not seem quite as cathartic as it does for me.

But for those of us who maintain multiple Google Web mail accounts and use various Google services, Google seems to be perpetually confused about who we are. The various capabilities Google offers for switching accounts are constantly breaking, and when they fail, they often log users out of everything.

The solution that many people — including Google executives! — have found themselves using is to keep multiple browsers open for their different Google accounts. So, for a long time, Safari was my work mail browser, and Chrome or Firefox was for everything else.

One prominent Google exec recently admitted to me that he always has a development version of Chrome and the current release running, so he can keep his personal and professional accounts separate.

But in the new Chrome, users can configure multiple accounts. Then each new window they open, and all the tabs within it, are associated with one of the accounts.

Yesterday, after I downloaded the new Chrome, I created an “ATD” and a “personal” profile, and associated a little cartoon image with each. Now each of my browser windows has one of the icons in the top right corner. And if I open up a Google site like YouTube in an ATD window, it’s logged into that account. Then, over in a personal window, I can have a different self logged into YouTube simultaneously. Whoa!

I know I sound kind ridiculous right about now, but this used to be so hard!

Also, I should say I’m not sure how easy and natural it will be to deal with this extra identity layer. At the start, at least, it feels awkward. Maybe some keyboard shortcuts to toggle between my personas would be nice.

Here’s Google’s explanation of how to set this up:

To try it out, go to Options (Preferences on Mac), click Personal Stuff, and click “Add new user.” A fresh instance of Chrome will open, ready to be customized with its own set of apps, bookmarks, extensions and other settings. A badge in the upper corner lets you know at a glance that this new Chrome browser belongs to you, and you can customize the name and badge as you like. Clicking this badge drops down a menu of all the users on that computer, so you can easily switch between them. In addition, each user can sign in to Chrome to access their own personalized Chrome across all their computers.

A spokeswoman for Google said she didn’t know how many people have both Google Apps and personal Google accounts. However, more than four million businesses use Google Apps, and I think it’s safe to say many of their employees use Gmail, too.

Here’s Mozilla’s full statement:

Our search relationship with Google remains positive for both of us. We are in active negotiations and have nothing further to announce at this time.  We have every confidence that search partnerships will continue to be a strong and growing generator of revenue for the foreseeable future.

Mozilla said it also has partnerships with other search providers, including Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Mozilla’s overarching organization is a non-profit, but historically it has made most of its revenue via a royalty deal for searches made through the featured Google toolbar in its Firefox browser. In 2010 Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue, as ZDNet writer Ed Bott detailed in a post questioning Firefox’s viability.

Google and Mozilla had in 2008 said their deal was extended to November 2011. That was a significant vote of support from the search giant as it was right around the same time as the first release of its own browser, Chrome.

But Mozilla hadn’t publicly indicated that the deal was extended past this November, Bott pointed out.

Now, three years later, Chrome has just overtaken Firefox for the first time in browser market share, according to the analytics firm StatCounter. The timing is eerily precise.

Last month Chrome had 25.69 percent share compared to Firefox’s 25.23 percent. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still leads both of them.

I would add that I recently visited Mozilla’s new swanky top-floor San Francisco office with a deck directly overlooking the Bay Bridge (see photo above). The swanky setting didn’t project any particular concern about incoming revenue.

Safari accounted for 5.02 percent of global browser usage for September, according to Net Applications. That marks the first time that its share has topped five percent, the firm said.

The Mac itself now accounts for 6.45 percent of Web access worldwide, rising from just over six percent in August (the first time that Apple’s computers had accounted for that level of Web usage). Apple typically gains in September, Net Applications said, pointing out that September marks the start of the back-to-school season.

In the U.S., Apple’s share of the operating system market hit 13.7 percent, the firm said.

Globally, Windows still accounts for 92 percent of the desktop market, while Linux accounted for just over one percent.

On the browser side, Internet Explorer had 54 percent of the market, followed by Firefox with 22 percent and Google’s Chrome with 16 percent. That marks another in a long run of gains for Chrome, while Internet Explorer lost share for the seventh month in a row. Firefox was down just slightly from August.

Flickr, which has 68 million registered users, is “for people who care about photos,” said product head Markus Spiering.

So the Android app puts special emphasis on retaining high-resolution images, even if photo filters are added, and offers options to modify the flash, ratio selection, and shutter focus from within the viewfinder. Users can also scroll through their libraries of photos — though like on the Web, non-paying users can only see their 200 most recent photos.

Flickr previously released an iPhone app in 2009, which will be updated soon, said Spiering.

The other new Flickr feature, called “Photo Sessions,” helps users set up URLs they can share with rooms of 10 people where everyone can flip through, zoom in on and draw on photos in real time. So, for instance, a family could set up a time to virtually flip through an album of photos together and text-chat about them. Photo Session URLs last 24 hours and are only available in Safari (including on iOS devices), Firefox and Chrome. It’s kind of like Google Hangouts, without the video.

Yahoo’s Steve Douty, who is VP of applications and mobile product management, pitched the new Flickr features as part of a larger Yahoo strategy toward building an “interest graph” for its users and giving them “deeply personal digital experiences.” Yahoo had been a part of the Facebook platform announcements last week, and is now offering a personalized view of Yahoo News that shows users what their friends are reading.