The war of the browsers is heating up as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC) has just gone live. While the original plan was the launch the browser at a special event in San Francisco today, download links leaked a tad bit early. The real story is Microsoft’s claim the latest build puts it ahead of both Firefox and Chrome.
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that its beta version of Internet Explorer 9 had been downloaded more than 20 million times since being released on September 15, 2010. As of today that number is 25 million. The two primary focuses of IE 9 are privacy and speed. The latter of which comes from the addition of hardware acceleration to the browser.
“With this release you are seeing innovation after innovation that other folks are catching up to. Hardware acceleration was something no one was talking about until we did it. No one else was talking about privacy and tracking until we did it.”
On the privacy front, Internet Explorer 9 provides better control over how your information is being shared. Following the Federal Trade Commission’s call for a web equivalent of the Do Not Call list, Microsoft has added tracking protection lists that are user created. There’s also list created by the four main online privacy and tracking companies to allow or block a sites and ad networks.
A final version of Internet Explorer 9 is expected to release at MIX 11 in April. For now we have the Release Candidate, which should be very close to the final product, give or take a few bug fixes. If you’re ready to experience the future of Internet Explorer web browsing, hit the download link below and select your language and version of Windows from the drop-down menu.
Out Now | Microsoft | Free
