"We are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match," declared Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, today as Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Internet Explorer 8. "Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser - safety, speed and greater ease of use," Ballmer continued.

Internet Explorer 8 will be available for download manually at noon EDT in 25 languages, including Arabic, Chinese (Traditional, Simplified and Hong Kong), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Microsoft claims that IE 8 "blocks two to four times more malware attacks than other browsers; cuts down on the time it takes to complete common tasks on the Web such as searching, mapping and sharing, including navigating 15 of the 20 top worldwide sites; and blurs the lines between the services [people] use daily and the browser used to access the Internet."

The anti-malware and security aspects are being underlined by Microsoft as key to the new release. A new study commissioned by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance and conducted by Harris Interactive Inc., the company said in an announcement, shows that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online threats in the current economic climate, and 78 percent are more likely to choose a Web browser with built-in security than they were two years ago.

Security enhancements in Internet Explorer 8 "offer protection against existing and emerging security threats online," Microsoft said.

The IE8 RTM [release to manufacturing] is expected to go smoothly, James Pratt, a senior product manager on the IE development team, told reporters, since the file size of a browser is so much smaller than that of an operating system. (In January, the launch of Windows 7's public beta caused a server meltdown that delayed the process.)

"We are excited about Internet Explorer 8" said Matt Ackley, vice president of Internet Marketing and Advertising at eBay, who specifically welcomed a new feature in IE8 called Web Slices, which gives eBay the ability to provide its customers with updates to eBay products so they can keep track of their buying activity while surfing the web.