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Browser trust test: Would you let Chrome block ads? Or Firefox share and encrypt files?

Mozilla spins share 'n' synch as Google spins its own virtues

Google and Mozilla have each revealed significant new features in their respective browsers.

Chrome has gained its long-foreshadowed ad-blocker that Google swears on a stack of bibles will only excise ads that get in your face in unpleasant ways.

Reputable publishers, including El Reg, go to considerable length to ensure that advertisers with access to their properties don't do irritating or dangerous things. Google's positioned its efforts as helping such publishers while not-convincingly addressing concerns that making life hard for even misbehaving rival ad-slingers looks a bit like an abuse of its market power.

Judge those arguments for yourself as the blocker has landed in “Canary” , the at-your-own-risk experimental versions of Chrome that Google releases to those willing to go deep into the code mines.

Sharp-eyed Tweeter Tero Alhonen spotted the feature in a new build of the browser, showing off how it offers the chance to block “sites that tend to show intrusive ads”.

Over at Mozilla, meanwhile, comes news of three experimental features.

“Send” is a take on services like Hightail – formerly known as YouSendIt – or Adobe's Send & Track, and also mirrors features found in cloud storage lockers like Dropbox. Mozilla's spin on share 'n' synch works entirely inside Firefox, which lets you upload a file to Mozilla, encrypting it before it goes. Once uploaded you get a link you can share with someone else so they can download it. Send can handle files up to 1GB and destroys files once downloaded so that Mozilla isn't holding on to your stuff.

“Voice Fill” adds speech-to-text to Firefox, as part of Mozilla's ambitions to let you fill in fields of all sorts by speaking. “Notes” adds a sticky-note-like annotation feature to the browser. The new features can be activated at Mozilla's test pilot page. ®

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