Google's privacy policies have come under fire in the past, but when it comes to the 'do-not-track' feature mentioned in the Obama administration's online "Consumer Bill of Rights," the Sultan of search won't be pushing anyone's buttons. Instead, it will givers the opportunity to press a button, embedded in Chrome, to initiate the DNT feature and tell websites to back off.

Google promises Web surfers a "faster browser, safer downloading" with Chrome 17, the newest build of its popular browser to land in the stable channel. To back up those claims, Google made it so the omnibox predicts which site it thinks you're trying to visit and will now autocomplete as you start hammering out a Web address. On the security front, Chrome 17 checks executable files against a whitelist to try and find a match. If it doesn't find one, Chrome checks in with the mothership (Google) for more information and to see if the site you're trying to visit is known for distributing malware.

Mozilla's rapid release schedule for its Firefox browser means there's always a new version just around the corner. To wit, almost immediately after rolling out Firefox 10 to the masses, Mozilla has made available the first build of Firefox 11 on its Beta channel. Firefox 11 makes it easier than ever to switch from Chrome, and if that's what you want to do, Mozilla's latest build will happily migrate your bookmarks, history, and cookies over from Google's browser.

Mozilla's popular Firefox browser officially turns 10 today, as in version 10, not years in existence (if we're to use the launch of Firefox 1.0 as the browser's birth date, Firefox will turn 10 years old on November 9, 2014). New to version 10 is the absence of the Forward browsing button, which is now hidden until you navigate back. It also includes anti-aliasing for WebGL, and a few other tricks.