Almost six months after search engine Google launched its Internet Explorer browser Google Chrome, Microsoft on Wednesday launched its Windows Internet Explorer 8. The new browser is available on the Microsoft site, which can be downloaded by customers from 9.30 pm on Thursday (India time).

After two rounds of beta testing by Mircosoft’s and the new Explorer going live, the world of internet browsers is getting crowded with players such as Mozilla Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome already competing with each other.

In a bid to recapture it market share, Microsoft said it had included personalised features such as the ‘Accelerators’, ‘Visual Search’ and ‘Web Slices’ to make internet browsing faster and safer. The software vendor claimed that the added features would significantly cut down the number of clicks required to perform the most common tasks on the internet. According to metrics vendor Net Applications, which tracks usage, Internet Explorer, which had a market share of 75 per cent in April 2008, shrunk to 68 per cent by January 2009.

“The amount of time each of us spends online has grown exponentially —be it work, play, share, shop, socialise and much more. The browser has become our best companion in the journey of the online world. With Internet Explorer 8, we are redefining how people explore the universe around them, by making it faster, more fun, and safer, in a very personal and customised way,” said Hemant Sachdev, joint managing director, consumer and online, Microsoft India.

The browser also includes security, privacy, personalisation and performance benefits to consumers. It has features like ‘InPrivate Browsing and Crash recovery’. InPrivate Browsing offers the choice of going private on the internet, and ensuring that browsing history and related data is not retained locally on the computer they are using. Through ‘Crash recovery’, the browser offers the facility to automatically restore and reload, and any information the user may have already entered on the page (such as when writing an e-mail).

Globally, 15 of the top 20 worldwide sites have partnered with Microsoft to deliver this level of functionality to customers.