![Timeline of web browsers](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg)
A browser war is competition for dominance in the
usage share of web browsers
The usage share of web browsers is the portion, often expressed as a percentage, of visitors to a group of web sites that use a particular web browser.
Accuracy
Measuring browser usage in the number of requests (page hits) made by each use ...
. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
's
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
against
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
's
Navigator
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...
.
Browser wars continued with the decline of
Internet Explorer's market share and the popularity of other browsers including
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
,
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
(and other
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
-based browsers),
Safari
A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...
,
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...
and
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
.
With the introduction of
HTML5
HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...
and
CSS 3
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technol ...
, a new generation of browser war began, this time adding extensive
client-side scripting
A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, and includi ...
to the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, as well as the more widespread use of
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s and other
mobile devices
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
for browsing the web. These newcomers have ensured that browser battles continue among enthusiasts, while the average web user is less affected.
Background
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...
along with his colleagues at
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
started the development of
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
-based
hypertext
Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...
system, in the year 1989. This further led to creation of
HyperText Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
, which would set the protocols for the
client-server communication. In 1990, he created the only way to see the web back then, i.e. the original web browser,
WorldWideWeb
WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion between the software and the World Wide Web) is the first web browser and web page editor. It was discontinued in 1994. It was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor.
The source code was released in ...
, subsequently known as Nexus, and made it available for the
NeXTstep
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprieta ...
Operating System, by
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
.
Other browsers had started to surface by the year's end of 1992, many of which were based on the
libwww
Libwww was an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN, released libwww (then also called the "Common Library") in late 1992, comprising ...
library. These included
MacWWW/Samba for the
Mac and
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
browsers including
Line Mode Browser,
ViolaWWW
ViolaWWW is a discontinued browser, the first to support scripting and stylesheets for the World Wide Web (WWW). It was first released in 1991/1992 for Unix and acted as the recommended browser at CERN, where the WWW was invented, but eventually ...
,
Erwise
Erwise is a discontinued pioneering web browser, and the first available with a graphical user interface.
Released in April 1992, the browser was written for Unix computers running X and used the W3 common access library. Erwise was the combine ...
, and
MidasWWW
MidasWWW is one of the earliest (now discontinued) web browsers, developed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). It ran under Unix and OpenVMS. The last release was version 2.2. The 16 Nov 1992 sources were made available in June 2015 ...
. Even while these browsers tended to be basic HTML viewers that needed third-party
helpers to display
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
content, they gave consumers a selection of browsers and operating systems.
Mosaic Wars
Further browsers were released in 1993, including
Cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
,
Arena
An arena is a large enclosed platform, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theatre, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators ...
,
Lynx
A lynx is a type of wild cat.
Lynx may also refer to:
Astronomy
* Lynx (constellation)
* Lynx (Chinese astronomy)
* Lynx X-ray Observatory, a NASA-funded mission concept for a next-generation X-ray space observatory
Places Canada
* Lynx, Ontar ...
,
tkWWW
tkWWW is an early, now discontinued web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor written by Joseph Wang at MIT as part of Project Athena and the Globewide Network Academy project. The browser was based on the Tcl language and the Tk (toolkit) extension ...
, and
Mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
. The most influential of these was Mosaic, a multi-platform browser developed at
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale computer infrastructure that advances research, science and engineering based in the United States. NCSA operates as a ...
(NCSA). By October 1994, Mosaic was "well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface", according to Gary Wolfe of ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
''.
Several companies licensed Mosaic to create their commercial browsers, such as
AirMosaic,
Quarterdeck Mosaic
NCSA Mosaic is a discontinued web browser, one of the first to be widely available. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. It was named for its support ...
, and
Spyglass Mosaic. One of the Mosaic developers,
Marc Andreessen, co-founded the Mosaic Communications Corporation and created a new web browser named Mosaic Netscape.
To resolve legal issues with NCSA, the company was renamed
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
Communications Corporation, and the browser
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...
. The Netscape browser improved Mosaic's usability and reliability and was able to display pages as they loaded. By 1995, helped by the fact that it was free for non-commercial use, the browser dominated the emerging World Wide Web.
Other browsers launched during 1994 included
IBM Web Explorer,
Navipress
AOLpress is a discontinued HTML editor#WYSIWYG editors, HTML editor that was available from America Online (AOL). It was originally developed as NaviPress by the company NaviSoft before being bought by AOL. It was discontinued in 2000. However, th ...
,
SlipKnot,
MacWeb
MacWeb is an early, now discontinued classic Mac OS-only web browser for 68k and PowerPC Apple Macintosh computers, developed by TradeWave (formerly EINet) between 1994 and 1996.
MacWeb's major attraction was its ability to run well on low-end ...
, and
Browse
Browsing is a kind of orienting strategy. It is supposed to identify something of relevance for the browsing organism. When used about human beings it is a metaphor taken from the animal kingdom. It is used, for example, about people browsing o ...
.
In 1995, Netscape faced new competition from
OmniWeb
OmniWeb is a discontinued web browser that was developed and marketed by The Omni Group exclusively for Apple's macOS operating system. Though a stable version is no longer maintained, it is still available as a free download and unstable version ...
,
Eolas
Eolas (, meaning "Knowledge"; bacronym: "Embedded Objects Linked Across Systems") is a United States technology firm formed as a spin-off from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to commercialize UCSF's patents for work d ...
WebRouser,
UdiWWW, and Microsoft's
Internet Explorer 1.0
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating sy ...
, but continued to dominate the market.
First Browser War (1995–2001)
![Browser Wars (en)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Browser_Wars_%28en%29.svg)
By mid-1995, the World Wide Web had received a great deal of attention in
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
and the
mass media
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information ...
. Netscape Navigator was the most widely used web browser and Microsoft had licensed Mosaic to create Internet Explorer 1.0,
which it had released as part of the Microsoft
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
Plus! pack in August.
Internet Explorer 2.0 was released as a free download three months later. Unlike Netscape Navigator, it was available to all Windows users free of charge, this also applying to commercial companies. Other companies later followed suit and released their browsers free of charge.
Both Netscape Navigator and competitor products like
InternetWorks,
Quarterdeck Browser,
InterAp, and
WinTapestry were bundled with other applications to full
Internet suite
An Internet suite is an Internet-related software suite. Internet suites usually include a web browser, e-mail client (often with a news client and address book), download manager, HTML editor, and an Internet Relay Chat, IRC client.
The diversit ...
s.
New versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape, (branded as
Netscape Communicator
Netscape Communicator (or ''Netscape 4'') is a discontinued Internet suite produced by Netscape Communications Corporation, and was the fourth major release in the Netscape line of browsers. It was first in beta in 1996 and was released in June 1 ...
), were released at a rapid pace over the following few years.
Development was rapid and new features were routinely added, including Netscape's
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
(subsequently replicated by Microsoft as
JScript
JScript is Microsoft's legacy dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 and older.
JScript is implemented as an Active Scripting engine. This means that it can be "plugged in" to OLE Automation applicati ...
) and proprietary HTML tags such as
<blink
Blinking is a bodily function; it is a semi-autonomic rapid closing of the eyelid. A single blink is determined by the forceful closing of the eyelid or inactivation of the levator palpebrae superioris and the activation of the palpebral portio ...
>
(Navigator) and
< marquee>
(Internet Explorer).
Internet Explorer began to approach feature parity with Netscape with version 3.0 (1996), which offered scripting support and the market's first commercial
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
(CSS) implementation.
In October 1997,
Internet Explorer 4.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris (operating ...
was released. The release party in San Francisco featured a ten-foot-tall letter "e" logo. Netscape employees showing up to work the following morning found the logo on their front lawn, with a sign attached that read "From the IE team ...We Love You."
The Netscape employees promptly knocked it over and set a giant figure of their
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...
dinosaur mascot atop it, holding a sign reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18" representing the market distribution.
Internet Explorer 4 changed the tides of the browser wars. It was integrated into Microsoft Windows, which gave it a large installation base.
During these releases, it was common for web designers to display 'best viewed in Netscape' or 'best viewed in Internet Explorer' logos. These images often identified a specific browser version and were commonly linked to a source from which the stated browser could be downloaded. These logos generally recognized the divergence between the standards supported by the browsers and signified which browser was used for testing the pages. In response, supporters of the principle that websites should be compliant with
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
standards and hence viewable with any browser started the "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign, which employed its logo similar to the partisan ones. Most mainstream websites, however, specified one of Netscape or IE as their preferred browser while making some attempt to support minimal functionality on the other.
While Netscape began with about 80% market share and a good deal of public goodwill, as a relatively small company deriving the great bulk of its income from what was essentially a single product (Navigator and its derivatives), it was financially vulnerable. Microsoft's resources allowed them to make Internet Explorer available without charge, as the revenues from Windows were used to fund its development and marketing. As a result, Internet Explorer was provided free for all Windows and Macintosh users, unlike Netscape which was free for home and educational use but would require a paid license for business use; as it was told by
Jim Barksdale
James Love Barksdale (born January 24, 1943) is an American executive who served as the president and CEO of Netscape from January 1995 until the company merged with AOL in March 1999.
Early life
James Barksdale was born in Jackson, Mississipp ...
, President and CEO of Netscape Communications: "Very few times in warfare have smaller forces overtaken bigger forces...".
Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows, which had an over 90% share of the desktop operating system market, allowing the company to obtain market share more easily than Netscape, as customers already had Internet Explorer installed as the default browser. At this time, many new computer purchasers had never extensively used a web browser before. Consequently, the buyer did not have anything else to compare with and little motivation to consider alternatives; the set of abilities they had gained with access to the Internet and the World Wide Web made any difference in browser features or ergonomics pale in comparison.
During the
United States Microsoft antitrust case
''United States v. Microsoft Corporation'', 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally m ...
in 1998, government witness and
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
vice president
Steven McGeady
Steven McGeady is a former Intel executive best known as a witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial. His notes and testimony contained colorful quotes by Microsoft executives threatening to "cut off Netscape's air supply" and Bill Gates' guess ...
testified that a senior executive at Microsoft told him in 1995 of his company's intention to "cut off Netscape's air supply", although a Microsoft attorney
rejected McGeady's testimony as not credible. That same year, Netscape, the company, was acquired by
America Online
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
for
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
4.2 billion. Internet Explorer became the new dominant browser, attaining a peak of about 96% of the
web browser usage share during 2001.
The first browser war ended with Internet Explorer having no remaining serious competition for its market share. This also brought an end to the rapid innovation in web browsers; until 2006 there was only one new version of Internet Explorer since
version 6.0 had been released in 2001. Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1 was developed as part of
Windows XP Service Pack 1 and was also integrated into
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...
. Further enhancements were made to Internet Explorer in
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
(released in 2004), including a pop-up blocker and stronger default security settings regarding the installation of ActiveX controls.
Second Browser War (2004–2017)
![Wikipedia Main Page in Firefox 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Wikipedia_Main_Page_in_Firefox_2.0.0.12.png)
At the start of Netscape Navigator's decline, Netscape open-sourced its browser code and later entrusted it to the newly formed non-profit
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...
— a primarily community-driven project to create a successor to Netscape. Development continued for several years with little widespread adoption until a stripped-down browser-only version of the full suite, which included new features such as a separate search bar (which had previously only appeared in the Opera browser), was created. The browser-only version was initially named ''
Phoenix
Phoenix most often refers to:
* Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore
* Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States
Phoenix may also refer to:
Mythology
Greek mythological figures
* Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...
'', but because of
trademark issues that name was changed, first to ''Firebird'', then to ''
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
''. This browser became the focus of the Mozilla Foundation's development efforts and Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. It then continued to gain an increasing share of the browser market until a peak in 2010.
In 2003, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 would be the last standalone version of its browser. Future enhancements would be dependent on
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
, which would include new tools such as the
WPF and
XAML
Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML ) is a declarative XML-based language that Microsoft developed for initializing structured values and objects. It is available under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise.
XAML is used extensively ...
to enable developers to build web applications.
In response, in April 2004, the Mozilla Foundation and
Opera Software
Opera is a Norwegian multinational technology company and subsidiary of Kunlun that specializes in web browser development, fintech, as well as services such as Opera News and YoYo Games. The company's total user base, including users of its ...
joined efforts to develop new open-technology standards which add more capability while remaining backward-compatible with existing technologies. The result of this collaboration was the
WHATWG
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) is a community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple Inc., the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software, lea ...
, a working group devoted to the fast creation of new standard definitions that would be submitted to the
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
for approval.
The growing number of device/browser combinations in use, legally-mandated
web accessibility
Web accessibility, or eAccessibility,European CommissionCommunication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the , European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: eAccessibility, EC(2005)1095 ...
, as well as the expansion of expected web functionality to essentially require
DOM Dom or DOM may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Dom (given name), including fictional characters
* Dom (surname)
* Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto
* Dom people, an et ...
and scripting abilities, including
AJAX
Ajax may refer to:
Greek mythology and tragedy
* Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea
* Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris
* ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Greek ...
, made
web standards
Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of s ...
of increasing importance during this era. Instead of touting their proprietary extensions, browser developers began to market their software based on how closely it adhered to the behavior as specified by the standard.
Updated browsers and rise of mobile browsers
![Browser war-11](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Browser_war-11.svg)
On February 15, 2005, Microsoft announced that
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is par ...
would be available for Windows XP SP2 and later versions of Windows by mid-2005. The announcement introduced the new version of the browser as a major upgrade over Internet Explorer 6 SP1.
Opera had been a long-time small player in the browser wars, known for introducing innovative features such as tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, as well as being lightweight but
feature-rich
In software, the term feature has several definitions. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers defines the term ''feature'' in IEEE 829 as " distinguishing characteristic of a software item (e.g., performance, portability, or functio ...
. The software, however, was commercial, which hampered its adoption compared to its free rivals until 2005, when the browser became
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...
. On June 20, 2006, Opera Software released
Opera 9
The history of the Opera (web browser), Opera web browser began in 1994 when it was started as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995, the project branched out into a separate company named Opera ...
including an integrated source viewer, a
BitTorrent client implementation, and widgets. It was the first Windows browser to pass the
Acid2
Acid2 is a webpage that test web browsers' functionality in displaying aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The test page was released on 13 April 2005 by the Web Standards Project. The Acid2 test page will be ...
test.
Opera Mini
Opera Mini is a mobile web browser made by Opera. It was primarily designed for the Java ME platform, as a low-end sibling for Opera Mobile, but it is now developed exclusively for Android. It was previously developed for iOS, Windows 10 Mobile, ...
, a mobile browser, has a significant mobile market share. Editions of Opera are also available for the
Nintendo DS
The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tan ...
and the
Wii
The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...
.
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 on October 18, 2006. It included tabbed browsing, a search bar, a
phishing
Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwar ...
filter, and improved support for web standards (including full support for
PNG)—all features already long familiar to Opera and Firefox users. Microsoft distributed Internet Explorer 7 to
genuine Windows users (WGA) as a high-priority update through
Windows Update
Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers software updates for Wind ...
. Typical market share analysis showed only a slow uptake of Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft decided to drop the requirement for WGA and made Internet Explorer 7 available to all Windows users in October 2007. Throughout the two following years, Microsoft worked on
Internet Explorer 8
Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 19, 2009, as the eighth version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 7. It was the default browser in Windows 7 (later def ...
. On December 19, 2007, the company announced that an internal build of that version had passed the
Acid2
Acid2 is a webpage that test web browsers' functionality in displaying aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The test page was released on 13 April 2005 by the Web Standards Project. The Acid2 test page will be ...
CSS test in "IE8 standards mode"—the last of the major browsers to do so. Internet Explorer 8 was released on March 19, 2009. New features included
accelerators, improved privacy protection, a compatibility mode for pages designed for older browsers, and improved support for various web standards. It was the last version of Internet Explorer to be released for
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
. Internet Explorer 8 scored 20/100 in the
Acid3
The Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript.
If the test is successful, the results ...
test, which was much worse than all major competitors at the time.
On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Mozilla Firefox 2.0. It included the ability to reopen recently closed tabs, a session restore feature to resume work where it had been left after a crash, a phishing filter, and a spell-checker for text fields. Mozilla released
Firefox 3.0
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008, by the Mozilla Corporation.
Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standar ...
on June 17, 2008, with performance improvements and other new features.
Firefox 3.5 followed on June 30, 2009, with further performance improvements, native integration of audio and video, and more privacy features.
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
created
forks
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...
of the open-source
KHTML
KHTML is a browser engine developed by the KDE project. It is the default engine of the Konqueror browser, but it has not been actively worked on since 2016. Moreover, KHTML will be discontinued for KDE Frameworks 6.
Built on the KParts framewor ...
and
KJS layout and JavaScript engines from the
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...
Konqueror
Konqueror is a free and open-source web browser and file manager that provides web access and file-viewer functionality for file systems (such as local files, files on a remote FTP server and files in a disk image). It forms a core part of ...
browser in 2002. They explained that those provided a basis for easier development than other technologies by being small (fewer than 140,000
lines of code
Source lines of code (SLOC), also known as lines of code (LOC), is a software metric used to measure the size of a computer program by counting the number of lines in the text of the program's source code. SLOC is typically used to predict the am ...
), cleanly designed, and standards-compliant.
[KDE KFM-Devel mailing list]
(fwd) Greetings from the Safari team at Apple Computer
, January 7, 2003. The resulting
layout engine became known as
WebKit
WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS ...
and it was incorporated into the
Safari
A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...
browser that first shipped with
Mac OS X v10.3
Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. It was released on October 24, 2003.
System requirements
Panther's sy ...
. On June 13, 2003, Microsoft said it was discontinuing Internet Explorer on the Mac platform, and on June 6, 2007, Apple released a beta version of Safari for Microsoft Windows. On April 29, 2010,
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
wrote an open letter regarding his
Thoughts on Flash
"Thoughts on Flash" is an open letter published by Steve Jobs, co-founder and then-chief executive officer of Apple Inc., on April 29, 2010. The letter criticizes Adobe Systems' Flash platform and outlines reasons why the technology would not be ...
, and the place it would hold on Apple's
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
devices and
web browsers
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a User (computing), user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its Computer file, files from a web server and then displays the page on the user' ...
.
Web developer
A web developer is a programmer who develops World Wide Web applications using a client–server model. The applications typically use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the client, and any general-purpose programming language in the server. is used f ...
s were tasked with updating their
web sites
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...
to be mobile-friendly, and while many disagreed with
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
's assessment on
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
, history would soon prove his point with
notable mentions of poor performance of
Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Barry Allen)
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Wally West, the first Kid ...
on
Android devices.
HTML4
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
and
CSS2
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
were the standard in most browsers in 2006. However, new features being added to browsers from
HTML5
HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...
and
CSS3
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG, MathML or XHTML). CS ...
specifications were quickly making their mark by 2010, especially in the emerging
mobile browser
A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA. Mobile browsers are optimized to display Web content most effectively on small screens on portable devices. Mobile browser software must be sma ...
market where new ways of animating and rendering for various screen sizes were to become the norm. Accessibility would also become a key player for the mobile web.
On December 28, 2007, Netscape announced that support for its Mozilla-derived Netscape Navigator would be discontinued on February 1, 2008, suggesting its users migrate to Mozilla Firefox.
However, on January 28, 2008, Netscape announced that support would be extended to March 1, 2008, and mentioned
Flock alongside Firefox as alternatives to its users.
Chrome's Entry
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
released the
Chrome browser for Microsoft Windows on December 11, 2008, using the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari and a faster JavaScript engine called V8. Shortly after, an open-sourced version for the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms was released under the name
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
. According to Net Applications, Chrome had gained a 3.6% usage share by October 2009. After the release of the beta for Mac OS X and Linux, the market share had increased rapidly.
[
]
During December 2009 and January 2010, ''
StatCounter
StatCounter is a web traffic analysis website started in 1999. Access to basic services is free to use and advanced services can cost between and US$119 a month. StatCounter is based in Dublin, Ireland. The statistics from StatCounter are used ...
'' reported that its statistics indicated that Firefox 3.5 was the most popular browser when counting individual browser versions, passing Internet Explorer 7 and 8 by a small margin.
[Firefox 3.5 is world's most popular browser, StatCounter says](_blank)
Nick Eaton. Seattle blogs. 2009-12-21. Retrieved 2009-12-22. This was the first time a global statistic has reported that a non-Internet Explorer browser version had exceeded the top Internet Explorer version in usage share since the fall of Netscape Navigator. However, this feat, which GeekSmack called the "dethroning of Microsoft and its Internet Explorer 7 browser," could largely be attributed to the fact that it came at a time when version 8 was replacing version 7 as the dominant Internet Explorer version; no more than two months later Internet Explorer 8 had established itself as the most popular browser and version. Other major statistics, such as
Net Applications
Net Applications is a web analytics firm. The company is commonly known in the web browser development and technology news communities for its global market share statistics.
History
Since 1999, Net Applications is a source of applications for w ...
, never reported any non-Internet Explorer browser having a higher usage share than Internet Explorer if each version of each browser was looked at individually: for example, Firefox 3.5 was reported as the third most popular browser version from December 2009 to February 2010, succeeded by Firefox 3.6 since April 2010, each ahead of Internet Explorer 7 but behind Internet Explorer 6 and 8.
Chrome's dominance, Presto engine deprecation, and HTML5 standardized
![Google Chrome](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Google_Chrome_icon_%28February_2022%29.svg)
On January 21, 2010, Mozilla released
Mozilla Firefox 3.6
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is a version of the Firefox web browser released in January 2010. The release's main improvement over Firefox 3.5 is improved performance (due to further speed improvements in the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine). It uses the Ge ...
, which allows support for a new type of theme display, 'Personas', which allows users to change Firefox's appearance with a single click. Version 3.6 also improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup times.
In October 2010, StatCounter reported that Internet Explorer had for the first time dropped below 50% market share to 49.87% in their figures. Also, StatCounter reported Internet Explorer 8's first drop in usage share in the same month.
Google released
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
9 on February 3, 2011. New features introduced included support for
WebGL
WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated ...
, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store. The company created another seven versions of Chrome that year, finishing with Chrome 16 on December 15, 2011. Google Chrome 17 was released on February 15, 2012. In April 2012, Google browsers (Chrome and Android) became the most used browsers on
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...
sites. By May 21, 2012,
StatCounter
StatCounter is a web traffic analysis website started in 1999. Access to basic services is free to use and advanced services can cost between and US$119 a month. StatCounter is based in Dublin, Ireland. The statistics from StatCounter are used ...
reported Chrome narrowly overtaking Internet Explorer as the most used browser in the world.
However, troughs and peaks in the market share between Internet Explorer and Chrome meant that Internet Explorer was slightly ahead of Chrome on weekdays up until July 4. At the same time,
Net Applications
Net Applications is a web analytics firm. The company is commonly known in the web browser development and technology news communities for its global market share statistics.
History
Since 1999, Net Applications is a source of applications for w ...
reported Internet Explorer firmly in first place, with Google Chrome almost overtaking Firefox as the second. In 2012, responding to Chrome's popularity, Apple discontinued Safari for Windows.
Microsoft released
Internet Explorer 9
Internet Explorer 9 or IE9 (officially Windows Internet Explorer 9) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 14, 2011, as the ninth version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 8, and can replace p ...
on March 14, 2011. It featured a revamped interface, support for the basic
SVG feature set, and partial
HTML5 video
The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previo ...
support, among other new features. It only runs on
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
,
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
, and
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel.
It received multiple large upda ...
. The company later released
Internet Explorer 10
Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) is the tenth, and by now, discontinued, version of the Internet Explorer web browser and the successor to Internet Explorer 9, released by Microsoft on September 4, 2012, shortly after the completion of Windows Serv ...
along with
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...
and
Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was su ...
in 2012, and an update compatible with Windows 7 followed in 2013. This version drops Vista and Phone 7 support. The release preview of
Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh, final, and now deprecated version of the Internet Explorer web browser. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013, and was ...
was released on September 17, 2013. It supports the same desktops as its predecessor.
The concept of rapid releases established by Google Chrome prompted Mozilla to do the same for its Firefox browser. On June 21, 2011, Firefox 5.0 was the first rapid release for this browser, finished a mere six weeks after the previous edition. Mozilla created four more whole-number versions throughout the year, finishing with Firefox 9 on December 20, 2011. For those desiring
long-term support
Long-term support (LTS) is a product lifecycle management policy in which a stable release of computer software is maintained for a longer period of time than the standard edition. The term is typically reserved for open-source software, where i ...
, Mozilla made an Extended Support Release (ESR) version of
Firefox 10 on January 31, 2012. Contrary to the regular version, a Firefox ESR receives regular security updates plus occasional new features and performance updates for approximately one year, after which a 12-week grace period is given before discontinuing that version number. Those who continued to use the rapid releases with an active Internet connection were automatically updated to Firefox 11 on March 15, 2012. By the end of 2011, however, Chrome overtook Firefox to become world's most used browser, and the competition between Chrome and Firefox intensified.
During this era, all major web browsers implemented support for
HTML5 video
The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previo ...
. Supported codecs, however, varied from browser to browser. Current versions of Android, Chrome, and Firefox support Theora, H.264, and the VP8 version of WebM. Older versions of Firefox omitted H.264 due to it being a proprietary codec, but it was made available beginning in version 17 for Android and version 20 for Windows.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
and Safari support H.264 exclusively, but the Theora and VP8 codecs can be manually installed on the desktop versions. Given the popularity of WebKit for mobile browsers,
Opera Software
Opera is a Norwegian multinational technology company and subsidiary of Kunlun that specializes in web browser development, fintech, as well as services such as Opera News and YoYo Games. The company's total user base, including users of its ...
discontinued its Presto engine in February 2013. The Opera 12 series of browsers were the last to use Presto with its successors using WebKit instead. In 2015, Microsoft discontinued the production of newer versions of Internet Explorer. By this point, Chrome overtook all other browsers as the browser with the highest usage share.
Starting in 2015 with the release of
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
, Microsoft shifted from Internet Explorer to
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...
. However, the new browser has failed to capture much popularity as of 2018.
Microsoft Edge switched from its own browser engine,
EdgeHTML, to
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
's
Blink
Blinking is a bodily function; it is a semi-autonomic rapid closing of the eyelid. A single blink is determined by the forceful closing of the eyelid or inactivation of the levator palpebrae superioris and the activation of the palpebral portio ...
engine in 2020 for all platforms except for
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
, where it uses WebKit due to platform restrictions.
By 2017 usage shares of Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer fell well below 5% each, while Google Chrome had expanded to over 60% worldwide. In May 2017,
Andreas Gal
Andreas Gal is former chief technology officer at Mozilla. He is most notable for his work on several open source projects and Mozilla technologies.
Gal was born in Szeged, Hungary and grew up in Lübeck, Germany. During high school he worked on ...
, former Mozilla
CTO, publicly stated that Google Chrome won the Second Browser War.
Aftermath
Though
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
is no longer the default browser as of
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
, it continues to operate due to organizations needing it for
legacy application
In computing, a legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, "of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system", yet still in use. Often referencing a system as "legacy" means that it paved ...
s, and – despite its overall decline – has a higher usage share than its successor,
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...
. Due to
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
's success, in December 2018 Microsoft announced that they would be building a new version of Edge based on
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
and powered by Google's
rendering engine
Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...
,
Blink
Blinking is a bodily function; it is a semi-autonomic rapid closing of the eyelid. A single blink is determined by the forceful closing of the eyelid or inactivation of the levator palpebrae superioris and the activation of the palpebral portio ...
, rather than their own rendering engine,
EdgeHTML. The new Microsoft Edge browser was released on January 15, 2020. Though Firefox showed a slight increase in usage share as of February 2019, it continues to struggle with less than 10% usage share worldwide. By April 2019, worldwide Google Chrome usage share crossed 70% across personal computers and remained over 60% combining all devices. In June 2022, Microsoft permanently retired Internet Explorer in favor of Microsoft Edge as their sole browser.
See also
* ''
After the Software Wars''
*
Comparison of web browsers
General information
Basic general information about the browsers. Browsers listed on a light purple background are discontinued. Platforms with a yellow background have limited support.
Operating system support
Browsers are compiled to run o ...
*
History of the web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then store ...
*
History of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web ("WWW", "W3" or, simply, "the Web") is a global information medium which users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service tha ...
*
List of web browsers
The following is a list of web browsers that are notable.
Historical
Layout engines
* Gecko is developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
** Goanna is a fork of Gecko developed by Moonchild Productions.
* Servo is an experimental web brow ...
*
Usage share of web browsers
The usage share of web browsers is the portion, often expressed as a percentage, of visitors to a group of web sites that use a particular web browser.
Accuracy
Measuring browser usage in the number of requests (page hits) made by each use ...
References
Bibliography
* DOJ/Antitrust: U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division
Civil Action No. 98-1232 (Antitrust) Complaint, ''United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation'' May 18, 1998. Press release
External links
*
ttps://archive.org/stream/10Kahle000190#page/n77/mode/2up A March 1998 Interview with Marc Andreessen about Microsoft antitrust litigation and browser wars
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History: Chapter 4. Birth of the World Wide Web by Gregory R. GromovBrowser Statistics– Month by month comparison spanning from 2002 and onward displaying the usage share of browsers among web developers
– Chuck Upsdell's Browser Statistics
Browser Stats– Net Applications' Browser Statistics
StatCounter Global Stats– tracks the market share of browsers including mobile from over 4 billion monthly page views
Browser war, RIA and future of web developmentBrowser Wars II: The Saga Continues– an article about the development of the browser wars
Web Browsers' War – 2012– An article about web browsers' war in 2012
Thomas Haigh, "Protocols for Profit: Web and Email Technologies as Product and Infrastructure" in The Internet & American Business, eds. Ceruzzi & Aspray, MIT Press, 2008€“ business & technological history of web browsers, online preprint
Browser Market Share– current market share of browsers and their versions, desktop and mobile
{{Web browsers
Web browsers
Software wars