Assuming most people are using Internet Explorer, the default browser that came with your Computer, I'll use that one as a baseline for any comparisons. Here are my recommendations. Here is an interesting article by Farhad Manjoo at Slate.com about Google's Chrome browser strategy including a short video Google made when it asked people in the street the question, what is a browser?

Mozilla Firefox

My pick for Best Browser is currently Firefox. There are some solid reasons why I like it but key ones for a potential new user are these. Its fast, its secure and its customisable. A lot of the new developments in browser functionality over the last few years have been developed and perfected by Open Source developers working on the Firefox project making them an innovation leader when Microsoft dominated the marketplace with Internet Explorer.

Not to go into detail but the best benefit of Firefox is the add-on feature. There are currently over 6,000 add-ons to customize and enhance your web browsing experience.

In my eyes the Add-on to rule them all and reason enough to download and install Firefox is Adblock Plus.

I hate ads on webpages, I find them distracting at best, and a pain in the butt at worse. Adblock Plus removes them. All of them. Gone. This has the side benefit of speeding up your webbrowsing as you're PC no longer has to download or display ads.

Other Add-ons I use are Gmail Manager (integrating gmail login and mail notification into firefox), Better Gmail 2 (icons for Gmail attachments), Colourful Tabs (self explanatory), Fox Clocks (multiple city times viewable across the bottom of the browser), Google Gears (offline access to my google applications), Wikipedia Lookup (right click on a word which takes you to its Wikipedia page) and for fun, amusement and spectacular amounts of time-wasting, the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Opera 10

My 2nd choice is Opera 10. Its is probably faster than Firefox (those Firefox add-ons come with a small speed penalty) and also secure with all the functionality of a modern browser - tabbed browser windows, password manager and a quicklinks bar.

It also has an Addblock like feature. Rightclick empty space on any webpage and click Block Content and you can select add content that you don't want to see any more. You have to do it website by website so its not as comprehensive as Firefox's AdBlock Plus add-on but its pretty good. Opera has some nice features like Visual Tabs and smart toolbar suggesting sites while you are typing in your site address. Opera has some unique features also, including voice integration - allowing you to command Opera functions using your voice instead of your keyboard and mouse and also allowing you to rest your eyes and have the browser read back to you (albeit in a robotic voice) the text from articles you highlight.

Opera is an unsung success story in browsers. In the mobile browser world it has shipped over 120 Million copies of its browser on smartphones and PDAs including 30 Million using its Opera Mini browser.

Google Chrome

I'm an admitted Google software fan but so far Google Chrome just isn't doing it for me, and its not just the lack of an adblocker at this time. (As Google is now the worlds biggest advertising Company I'm not expecting this any time soon). I'm not a fan of the top toolbar layout with the tabs at the top, which looks weird to me, or OK, just unfamiliar.

Chrome features an Incognito mode, so you can browse in private. This stealth browsing mode allows you to open sites and even download files without affecting your histories. Additionally, cookies and passwords are deleted after you close the incognito window. You can even have one browser window open in normal mode and another in incognito mode.

Another nice feature is the anywhere drag and drop, which allows you to drag text or a link from anywhere on a web page and put it directly into your search bar. The smart toolbar gives helpful suggestions while you are typing in it, and makes it easy to revisit a previously viewed site that you’ve forgotten because the toolbar searches through titles as well as actual in-page text.

As a fan of the innovation going on within Google and its I expect my appreciation for Google Chrome would rise the more I use it, but I can't seeing me becoming familiar enough using it as my daily browser until it helps get those pesky ads of my screen.

Internet Explorer

I admit, I biased against Internet Explorer as a result of a legacy of crushing Netscape with their market postion and then producing some mediocre browser software. Previously Internet Explorer versions were known to be slow, unsecure and not standards compliant. A lot of the reasons for the bias no longer exist in the latest version 8.0 but its still not best of breed.

With IE 8 Microsoft has produced a solid product that is faster (but still slow in comparison) and is a good browser with some good features. If you you use Internet Explorer and don't fancy switching you should definitely upgrade to Version 8. It doesn't have an adblocking feature so it'll not be in the running for my default browser but they are starting to move in the add-on direction, offering a small selection of add-ons available but none that grabbed me as a standout.

Like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 has a private browsing mode. Unfortunately Microsoft is now no longer a leader in Browser software, rather Microsoft seems to be content to play catch up its competititors in this sector lagging them when it comes to speed of innovation as it focuses its resources in other more lucrative areas.