The fastest browser I would say would be FireFox.. I use it everyday and I'm using it now..
Internet Explorer is the least safest.. Because it can run ActiveX files..Which sometimes could be unsafe.
But the true answer in safety is.. any browser is only as safe as your browsing habits..
Stay away from warez sites and such.. And ALWAYS have a virus scanner installed and updated.
hmm internet engine? no far from it.. these are all simply web browsers or just an application which is a web client to a web server,, more precisely an applications which understands and speaks http hyper text transfer protocol,, these parse html code which comprise the sites we frequent and produce the output u see in the browser window..the differences in these browsers u named are many, 1 they are from seperate software vendors, microsoft, mozilla, and apple, 2 they are probably all programmed differently,, maybe in different lang. and all have seperate features which make them unique (ironically these are usually present amongst all common browsers),, but in general they make web requests and receive the response and interpret the html [XHTML & XML for the new web] code in a graphical display, to me firefox provides ample speed but ,, sad to say internet explorer is the fastest,,, now i've seen instances where firefox was faster but there were other things in play,, i suggest firefox no matter what,, about:config allows many changes to the browsers behavior =) some may make faster some may make slower,,, one thing to consider is the system ur browser sits on... are u experiences a lag on ur browser or is the browser a lag on the system??? how much memory, whats the network utilization while browsing? is there constant CPU load spike while browsing,, this may indicate that u should upgrade on resources,, or review ur browser settings/plugins etc... lataZ