On Monday, Microsoft finally announced the launch of Internet Explorer 9.  VentureBeat touts it as a “minimalistic design”, probably as a reaction to Google Chrome.  The trimmed down design and use of hardware acceleration for HTML 5 makes it a much faster browser than the previous version.  Some are even comparing the speed to the current version of Firefox.

According to AfterDawn news, “Internet Explorer 9 downloads top 2.3 million first day”.

You can download it at Beauty of the Web if you haven’t already.