Web browser wars

As far as browser innovation went the first half of this decade was extremely dull.

Once Microsoft had won the original browser war, totally eclipsing Netscape, it settled for a period of entrenchment, refusing to make its browser comply with web standards because with a 95 per cent market share, it argued, Internet Explorer was the de facto standard.

For years it seemed that no other browser could gain even a foothold against the lumbering giant, until an offshoot of the Mozilla project (a foundation originally created by Netscape) released a new browser in 2004, which grew into the program we now know as Firefox. Not only that, but just a few months prior to this Apple had released the Safari browser with Mac OSX 10.3.

Finally it looked as if the tide might be turning and Microsoft could be in for some serious competition. But the fightback has been slow; taking four years for Firefox to gain 20 per cent of the market, and Safari and Google’s new Chrome browser to take another 10 per cent between them. Still this means that by the end of 2008 about a third of Microsoft’s monopoly had been eroded.

Not that we’re bashing Microsoft here. Rather we’re hailing a small victory for standards compliance and innovation as the internet once again appears to be at a turning point, now that there are five main web browsers to choose from: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari and Google Chrome, with all four of the latter browsers gaining ground against the former.

But what does this mean for users? Will the web look different depending on which browser we choose? Will we miss some good content if we make the wrong choice? And what does the future hold for web innovation and new browser technologies?

To answer these questions it’s necessary to understand how we got to the current situation, by looking at the development of each of the main contenders.

Netscape Navigator
No official download since March 2008
Share of browser market: 0%

Marc Andreessen first developed the Mosaic browser in 1992 at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). He later founded Mosaic Communications, which became Netscape Communications and led to the release of Netscape Navigator in 1994. Although users were reminded that they had to register for personal or business use, this was never enforced other than by nag screens. Even so, Netscape became a hugely profitable organisation.

So it’s a shame that the first great browser, which in its prime accounted for almost 100 per cent of all browser users, now has less then half a per cent remaining. The reason for this, of course, is that it lost a long and hard-fought war against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. From the outset it was a battle that Netscape couldn’t win. One way or another, once Microsoft saw the revenue a web browser could generate, it wanted its own, and when it couldn’t buy Netscape it bought the next best thing, Spyglass Mosaic, rebranded it and pitched it head to head against Netscape.