Sony has already conducted a test run this last May, and the test phase is now almost over.

It may be safe to assume, though, that other browsers will also be available on Sony PCs as they would not want to upset their users.

The deal is a first for Google, and they hope to be able to win similar deals with other computer manufacturers as well, in order to promote Chrome.

Chrome’s market share might get a slight push by this means. Personal computers from Sony account for less than 5% of the US market share. This could be a very good first step in the right direction. However, Google should have probably waited to win some bigger players over to their side before announcing their strategy to their competitors!

With competitors like Microsoft, Google had better watch its back when trying to make in-roads into the PC market. Microsoft pretty much has that market cornered. Internet Explorer comes with the Windows operating system, which is used on over 90% of all PCs shipped.

Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browser are way ahead of Chrome in terms of market share. They have, of course, been around for a much longer time.

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer currently has about two thirds of the market share among Internet users, with 67.7%, Firefox has 22.5%, Apple’s Safari has 4.1%, while Google’s Chrome has a mere 2.59%.

Mozilla is expected to launch the latest version of their browser, Firefox 3.1, shortly. In Russia, however, the default page will now be Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, instead of Google.

According to Harvey Anderson, who is the General Counsel at Mozilla, they have conducted a very extensive and detailed study into the matter before arriving at this decision. He says, “Russian users really wanted direct access to Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds. As a result we’re planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds.”

The change by Mozilla from Google to Yandex at this point of time is particularly interesting, given the fact that in August 2008, the Russian online ad market grew by 73% compared to what it was in the same month a year earlier. It has also been estimated that the Russian online ad market will grow from $400 million in 2007, to $4 billion by 2017, which is a 10-fold increase in a span of just 10 years.

This move will certainly boost the fortunes of Yandex at the expense of Google.

In the past, Google and Mozilla have shared a mutually beneficial or symbiotic relationship for quite a long time. Google received exposure by being the default home page and default search engine on Mozilla browsers, and in turn, Mozilla earned a major share of its revenue through Google.

This happy situation may now be on a slightly sticky wicket, given that Mozilla will replace Google with Yandex in Russia and Google is now promoting its own browser, Chrome.

Now, towards the end of 2008, Mozilla has launched the second alpha release of Fennec. They first launched the version that is compatible with the Nokia N810 handset in October 2008 and later with Windows desktop computers. They are also targeting Linux and Mac computers.

Fennec will not be compatible with popular handsets such as the BlackBerry Bold, T-Mobile G1 and iPhone 3G. Christian Sejersen, Mozilla’s director of mobile engineering wrote on his blog that Fennec will not operate on the Android or RIM platforms due to technical or licensing difficulties.

The new version of Fennec has improved abilities of panning and zooming while a page is still downloading, and also after the page is downloaded. It will also be very easy to use facilities such as bookmarks, thumbnails or add tags. A mockup of the browser is shown alongside.

ArsTechnica reports that application developers have already started developing new features to add to Fennec. For instance, there is a Twitter bar extension. If users make use of this they will be able to post information directly on Twitter from the Fennec address bar. Developers are also reportedly working on a Fennec port of the Weave Framework similar to the one for Firefox. It will be a while, therefore, before the finalised product is available.