Search engine giant, Google, has reached yet another milestone: The Chrome web browser now has 10,000 extensions available, many of which have been available for download for nearly a year. Included in the number are the regular browser extensions to increase functionality and productivity, as well as themes to enhance the look and feel of the browser. According to a celebratory post on the Chromium blog in honor of the milestone, every Chrome user has installed at least one extension or theme, and at least 70 million extensions have been installed overall.

A closer look at the extensions gallery in the Chrome browser reveals that there are actually over 10,000 extensions available. 10,078 were available on the last check.

Why is this such a big accomplishment? There is one big reason worth mentioning: Firefox. Mozilla’s popular browser is Chrome’s biggest competition at this point, especially in the add-on/extension market. The most recent check on the total of Firefox extensions showed 12,739.

It’s easy to see that the two browsers are close in terms of the number of extensions each offers its users. Chrome, though, has shown considerably more in terms of growth over the last eight months. Last spring, Firefox offered users a total of 11,000 add-ons, while Chrome only offered 3,000. Do the math, and it’s easy to see that extensions developed for Chrome have more than doubled.

The next six months could prove interesting for both companies as Google rolls out its newly minted Chrome OS (which depends heavily on extensions), and as Mozilla rolls Firefox 4 through its beta phase.

The two search engine giants are about to begin a battle over web apps as well, with Google releasing its Chrome Web Store. At this point, though, most of the available apps function as extensions more than anything else. Mozilla plans to fight back with the release of its Open Web App Ecosystem.

On December 9th, Mozilla, owner and creator of the user-customizable, multi-OS search engine, Firefox, released patches to address eleven security flaws that were thought to be fixed with patches released back in March of this year. User complaints and an increase in hacker possible identity theft activity brought the issues to Mozilla’s attention, so the patches from March were revamped and re-released, fixing the complaints.

Out of the eleven complaints, nine were marked as critical, one as high, and one as moderate.

In the release file for the newest patches, Mozilla said that there were other patches released between March and this update that corrected other flaws, such as a location bar issue and numerous browser memory bugs, all of which were reported by users at one point or another. The newly released patches fixed over fifty other flaws that included stability troubles, as well as fixing the critical security flaws.

The newly released fixes are for users who are running versions 3.5.15 and 3.6.13. While the patches released in March were only for users of the 3.6 versions, The newly-released ones have been revamped for users of both the 3.5 and 3.6 versions. While the latter is the newest version of the browser, Mozilla still takes care of its users who choose to run older versions of the browser, something that other browser companies rarely do.

While the new releases fix the critical security flaws, Mozilla suggests that Firefox users be cautious when surfing the Internet. If you use any add-ons with the Firefox browser, always make sure they are compatible with any new version of the browser that you download. If they’re not, uninstall them. Perhaps the best way to keep yourself safe is to only download add-ons and other items from trusted sources.

If you’re using Firefox and haven’t downloaded the new patches, you can do so by checking for updates, or by visiting the downloads page in the Mozilla web site.