Browser wars

Browser Wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during the late 1990s and the erosion of Internet Explorer's market share since 2003 by a collection of emerging browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

In more recent years, the introduction of HTML5, CSS 3 and extensive client-side scripting to the World Wide Web, as well as more widespread use of smartphones and other mobile devices for browsing the web, have added new dimensions and some new players, ensuring that boisterous browser battles continue on many fronts.

Background

The World Wide Web is an Internet-based hypertext system invented in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser WorldWideWeb, later renamed Nexus, and released it for the NeXTstep platform in 1991.

By the end of 1992 other browsers had appeared, many of them based on the libwww library. These included Unix browsers such as Line Mode Browser, ViolaWWW, Erwise and MidasWWW, and MacWWW/Samba for the Mac. Even though these browsers tended to be simple HTML viewers, relying on external helper applications to view multimedia content, they provided choice to users both in browsers and platforms.

Mosaic wars

“	There are two ages of the Internet - before Mosaic, and after. The combination of Tim Berners-Lee's Web protocols, which provided connectivity, and Marc Andreesen's browser, which provided a great interface, proved explosive. In twenty-four months, the Web has gone from being unknown to absolutely ubiquitous.	”
—A Brief History of Cyberspace, Mark Pesce, ZDNet, October 15, 1995

Further browsers were released in 1993, including Cello, Arena, Lynx, tkWWW and Mosaic. The most influential of these was Mosaic, a multiplatform browser developed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). By October 1994, Mosaic was "well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface", according to Gary Wolfe of Wired.^[1]

Several companies licensed Mosaic to create their own commercial browsers, such as AirMosaic and Spyglass Mosaic. One of the Mosaic developers, Marc Andreessen, founded Mosaic Communications Corporation and created a new web browser named Mosaic Netscape. To resolve legal issues with NCSA, the company was renamed Netscape Communications Corporation and the browser Netscape Navigator. The Netscape browser improved on 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, SlipKnot, MacWeb, and Browse.^[2]

In 1995, Netscape faced new competition from OmniWeb, WebRouser, UdiWWW, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 1.0, but continued to dominate the market.

The first browser war

By mid-1995 the World Wide Web had received a great deal of attention in popular culture and the mass media. Netscape Navigator was the most widely used web browser and Microsoft had licensed Mosaic to create Internet Explorer 1.0,^[3][4] which it had released as part of the Microsoft Windows 95 Plus! Pack in August.^[5]

Internet Explorer 2.0 was released as a free download three months later. Unlike Netscape Navigator it was available to all Windows users for free, even commercial companies.^[6] Other companies later followed and gave their browsers away for free.^[7] Both Netscape Navigator and competitor products like InternetWorks, Quarterdeck Browser, InterAp, and WinTapestry were bundled with other applications to full internet suites.^[7] New versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape (branded as Netscape Communicator) were released at a rapid pace over the following few years.

Development was rapid and new features were routinely added, including Netscape's JavaScript (subsequently replicated by Microsoft as JScript) and proprietary HTML tags such as <blink> and <marquee>.

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 (CSS) implementation.

In October 1997, Internet Explorer 4.0 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 giant 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 dinosaur mascot atop it, holding a sign reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18" representing the market distribution.^[8]

Internet Explorer 4 changed the tides of the browser wars. It was integrated into Microsoft Windows, which some considered technologically disadvantageous and an apparent exploitation of Microsoft's monopoly on the PC platform. Users were discouraged from using competing products because IE was "already there" on their PCs.^{[citation needed]}

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 web sites should be compliant with World Wide Web Consortium standards and hence viewable with any browser started the "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign, which employed its own logo similar to the partisan ones.

Internet Explorer 5 & 6

Microsoft had three strong advantages in the browser wars.

One was resources: Netscape began with about 80% market share and a good deal of public goodwill, but 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. Netscape's total revenue never exceeded the interest income generated by Microsoft's cash on hand. Microsoft's vast resources allowed them to make IE available without charge, as the enormous revenues from Windows were used to fund its development and marketing. Netscape was commercial software for businesses but provided gratis for home and education users; Internet Explorer was provided gratis for all Windows and Macintosh users, cutting off a significant revenue stream: As it was told by Jim Barksdale, President and CEO of Netscape Communications: "Very few times in warfare have smaller forces overtaken bigger forces...".^[9]

Another advantage was that Microsoft Windows had over 90% share of the desktop operating system market. IE was bundled with every copy of Windows; therefore Microsoft was able to dominate the market share easily as customers had IE as a default. In this time period, many new computer purchases were first computer purchases for home users or offices, and many of the users had never extensively used a web browser before, so had nothing to compare with and little motivation to consider alternatives; the great 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 in 1998, Intel vice president Steven McGeady, a witness called by the government, said on the stand that a senior executive at Microsoft told him in 1995 of his company's intention to "cut off Netscape's air supply". A Microsoft attorney said that McGeady's testimony is not credible.^[10] That same year, Netscape, the company, was acquired by America Online for US$4.2 billion. Internet Explorer became the new dominant browser, attaining a peak of about 96% of the web browser usage share during 2002, more than Netscape had at its peak.

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 SP1, and integrated into Windows Server 2003. Further enhancements were made to Internet Explorer in Windows XP SP2 (released in 2004), including a pop-up blocker and stronger default security settings against the installation of ActiveX controls.

The second browser war

After the defeat of Navigator by Internet Explorer, Netscape open-sourced their browser code, and entrusted it to the newly formed non-profit Mozilla Foundation—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 was created, which included features, such as tabbed browsing and a separate search bar, both that had previously only appeared in Opera. The browser-only version was initially named Phoenix, but because of trademark issues that name was changed, first to Firebird, then to Firefox. 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, after which it has remained largely stable.

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, which would include new tools such as the WPF and XAML to enable developers to build extensive Web applications.

In response, in April 2004, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software joined efforts to develop new open technology standards which add more capability while remaining backward-compatible with existing technologies.^[11] The result of this collaboration was the WHATWG, a working group devoted to the fast creation of new standard definitions that would be submitted to the W3C for approval.

Mid to late 2000s: Updated browsers released

On February 15, 2005, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 7 would be available for Windows XP SP2 and later versions of Windows by mid-2005.^[12] 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. The software, however, was commercial, which hampered its adoption compared to its free rivals until 2005, when the browser became freeware. On June 20, 2006, Opera Software released Opera 9 including an integrated source viewer, a BitTorrent client implementation and widgets. It was the first Windows browser to pass the Acid2 test. Opera Mini, a mobile browser, has significant mobile market share as well as being available on the Nintendo DS and Wii.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 on October 18, 2006. It included tabbed browsing, a search bar, a phishing filter, and improved support for Web standards — all features already familiar to Opera and Firefox users. Microsoft distributed Internet Explorer 7 to genuine Windows users (WGA) as a high priority update through Windows Update.^[13] 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.^[14] Throughout the two following years, Microsoft worked on Internet Explorer 8. On December 19, 2007, the company announced that an internal build of that version had passed the Acid2 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^[15] and improved support for various web standards. It is the last version of Internet Explorer to be released for Windows XP.

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 on June 17, 2008,^[16] 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.^[17]

Apple had created forks of the open-source KHTML and KJS layout and JavaScript engines from the KDE Konqueror browser in 2002. They explained that those provided a basis for easier development than other technologies by virtue of being small (fewer than 140,000 lines of code), cleanly designed, and standards compliant.^[18] The resulting layout engine became known as WebKit and it was incorporated into the Safari browser that first shipped with Mac OS X v10.3. On June 13, 2003, Microsoft said it was discontinuing IE on the Mac platform and on June 6, 2007, Apple released a beta version of Safari for Microsoft Windows.

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.^[19] 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.

Google 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. An open sourced version for the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms was released under the name Chromium. 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.^[20]

During December 2009 and January 2010, StatCounter 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.^[21][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. This feat, which GeekSmack called the "dethron[ing of] Microsoft and its Internet Explorer 7 browser,"^[23] could largely be attributed to the fact that it came at a time when IE 8 was replacing IE 7 as the dominant Internet Explorer version. No more than two months later IE 8 had established itself as the most popular browser version, a position which it still held as of March 2011. It should also be noted that other major statistics, such as Net Applications, never reported any non-IE browser version as having a higher usage share than the most popular Internet Explorer version, although Firefox 3.5 was reported as the third most popular browser version between December 2009 and February 2010, to be replaced by Firefox 3.6 since April 2010, each ahead of IE7 and behind IE6 and IE8.^[24]

2010s–present: HTML5 beginnings and Presto rendering engine deprecation

On January 21, 2010, Mozilla released Mozilla Firefox 3.6, 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 improves JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup times.^[25]

In October 2010, StatCounter reported that Internet Explorer had for the first time dropped below 50% market share to 49.87% in their figures.^[26] Also, StatCounter reported Internet Explorer 8's first drop in usage share in the same month.^[27]

Google released Google Chrome 9 on February 3, 2011. New features introduced include: support for WebGL, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store.^[28] The company created another seven versions of Chrome that year, finishing with Chrome 16 on December 15, 2011. The first version of Chrome available to the public in 2012 was Chrome 17, which was released on February 15, 2012. In April 2012, Google browsers (Chrome and Android) became the most used browsers on Wikimedia.^[29] By May 21, 2012, StatCounter reported Chrome narrowly overtaking Internet Explorer as the most used browser in the world.^[30] 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.^[31] At the same time, Net Applications reported Internet Explorer firmly in first place, with Google Chrome almost overtaking Firefox as the second.^[32]

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 on March 14, 2011. It featured a revamped interface, support for the basic SVG feature set, and partial HTML5 video support, among other new features. It only runs on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7. The company later released Internet Explorer 10 along with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 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 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.^[33] Mozilla created four more whole-number versions throughout the year, finishing with Firefox 9 on December 20, 2011. For those desiring long term support, 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.

During this era, all major web browsers implemented support for HTML5 video. 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 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 discontinued its own Presto engine in February 2013. The Opera 12 series of browsers is the last to use Presto. Its successors use Blink and WebKit instead.

The mobile browser war (2007–present)

Due to the rise in popularity of the iPhone and Google Android, WebKit has become the most dominant layout engine. This has caused Web developers for many major Web sites to use proprietary or experimental features that only work in WebKit-based Web browsers. Competing mobile Web browsers — namely Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera — have a poorer experience when viewing most mobile versions of Web sites^{[citation needed]}.

This has led to a Call For Action, from the co-chairman of the CSS Working Group at the W3C, to strongly encourage Web developers to use widely-supported Web standards in their Web sites.^[34] Additionally, the competing browser vendors have taken action to add support for some WebKit experimental CSS properties.

In April 2013, Google announced that future versions of Chrome (versions 28 and beyond) would use the Blink layout engine, a fork of WebKit. One of the changes that Blink made to WebKit was the removal of vendor CSS prefixes, one of the chief ways web developers used experimental, non standard features.^[35]

Other browser competition

Microsoft Windows

Internet Explorer's usage share had been dropping since the mid-2000s decade.^[36] By 2012, however, Net Applications estimate IE's share to have levelled out above 50% and slowly started to rise from there.^[37] On the other hand, according to StatCounter, by June 2012 its usage share had fallen to second place behind Google Chrome, released less than four years previously in September 2008, which has since also eclipsed Mozilla Firefox, pushing it to third place.^[30]

In March 2008, Apple released Safari 3.1, began including it as a pre-selected update in the Apple Software Update program^[38] and its market share on Windows tripled.^[39]As of 2011, it was in fourth place, followed by Opera.^[40] Other browsers based on Internet Explorer's Trident layout engine, such as Maxthon, included features like tabbed browsing and were once popular but fell out of use when IE began adding such features itself from version 7 onwards.

Linux and Unix

The Unix-based Konqueror browser is part of the KDE project and is the primary competitor against Mozilla-based browsers (Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite/SeaMonkey, Epiphany, Galeon, etc.) for market share on Unix-like systems. Konqueror's KHTML engine is an API for the KDE desktop. Derivative browsers and web-browsing functionality (for example, Amarok has a Wikipedia sidebar that gives information about the current artist) based on KDE use KHTML.^[41]

OS X

Safari is Apple's web browser for OS X, and also has the highest usage share on OS X.^[42] The web browser is based on WebKit, a derivative of the KHTML engine. Other Mac browsers including iCab (since 4.0), OmniWeb (since 4.5), and Shiira, use the WebKit API, and many other Macintosh programs add web-browsing functionality through WebKit.^[43] Mozilla Firefox and Opera Browser also have high usage on OS X.

Camino is a Mozilla-based Gecko browser for the OS X platform, and uses Mac's native Cocoa interface like Safari does, instead of Mozilla's XUL which is used in Firefox. It was initially developed by Dave Hyatt, until he was hired by Apple to develop Safari.

Embedded devices

Opera Mini is a popular web browser on mobile devices such as most Java ME enabled internet connected phones and smartphones because of its small footprint. It has also recently been released for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. Sony developed a mobile browser for their PSP, using Netfront's codebase. Sony's PlayStation 3 also includes a web browser. PC Site Viewer, the web browser included on many Japanese cellular phones, is based on Opera. In February 2006 it was announced that Nintendo "will release an add-on card" with a version of Opera for the Nintendo DS (Nintendo DS Browser).^[44] This DS browser has since been criticized for its lack of Flash support and slowness.^[45] Opera is also used as a web browser on the Wii console.

Nokia released a WebKit-based browser in 2005,^[46] which comes with every Symbian S60 platform-based smartphone. On Nokia's N900 is MicroB, a Firefox derivate, preinstalled. It competes with Opera for the N900.

Windows Phone 7 came with a version of Internet Explorer Mobile based on a rendering engine that was said to be somewhere between Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8.^{[citation needed]} Microsoft has since updated the layout engine to that of Internet Explorer 9. Windows Phone 8 uses a mobile version of Internet Explorer 10.

Windows Mobile comes with Internet Explorer Mobile by default and competes with Opera Mobile, Netfront, Iris, and Mozilla's Minimo, and lately the Skyfire browser (also available for Android, iOS, and Symbian).

MobileSafari, Apple's browser based on WebKit/KHTML, comes with iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad.

Android, Google's open-source OS for mobile devices, uses a browser based on WebKit. Since March 2010, Opera Mini has been available for Android.^[47] Other browsers include Chrome for Android, Dolphin, Opera Mobile and Firefox 4. With the release of Android Jelly Bean, Chrome for Android is now being included as the default browser for future Android devices, replacing the previous WebKit version.

See also

• After the Software Wars
• Comparison of web browsers
• Usage share of web browsers

Notes

References

External links

• Browser Statistics – Month by month comparison spanning from 2002 and onward displaying the usage share of browsers among web developers.
• Browser Stats – 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 development
• Browser 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
• stephenbrooks.org – browserwars – a multiplayer browser game, shows the logo of the browsers used

v t e Timeline of web browsers   General Comparison History List for Unix Usage share   1990s 1990 WorldWideWeb (Nexus) 1991 Line Mode Browser libwww 1992 Erwise MacWWW (Samba) MidasWWW tkWWW ViolaWWW 1993 AMosaic Arena Cello Emacs/W3 Lynx 2 NCSA Mosaic VMS Mosaic 1994 AirMosaic Internet in a Box ANT Fresco Argo IBM WebExplorer MacWeb SlipKnot Minuet Navipress Mosaic/Mosaic Netscape/Netscape Navigator Spyglass Mosaic TCP/Connect II MacWeb 1995 Agora ALynx AMSD Ariadna Cyberjack eWorld Web Browser Grail Internet Explorer 1 Internet Explorer 2 Netscape Navigator 2 NetShark OmniWeb HotJava UdiWWW WebShark 1996 Cyberdog Arachne AWeb IBrowse Amaya Internet Explorer 3 Netscape Navigator 3 Opera 2 Oracle PowerBrowser tcpCONNECT4 Voyager 1997 Netscape Communicator Internet Explorer 4 Opera 3 1998 NeoPlanet Mozilla Application Suite 1999 iCab Internet Explorer 5   2000s 2000 Beonex Communicator Galeon K-Meleon MediaBrowser Netscape 6 Opera 4-5 2001 Internet Explorer 6 Opera 6 2002 Camino Epiphany Netscape (version 7) 2003 Maxthon Opera 7 Safari 2004 Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox 2005 AOL Explorer Deepnet Explorer Firefox 1.5 Opera 8 Safari 2 2006 Firefox 2 Internet Explorer 7 Opera 9 2007 Opera 9.5 Safari 3 2008 Google Chrome Firefox 3 2009 Google Chrome 2-3 Firefox 3.5 Internet Explorer 8 Opera 10 Safari 4   2010s 2010 Google Chrome 4-8 Firefox 3.6 Opera 11 Safari 5 2011 Google Chrome 9-16 Firefox 4 Firefox 5–9 Internet Explorer 9 Opera 12 2012 Google Chrome 17-23 Firefox 10–17 Internet Explorer 10 Safari 6 2013 Google Chrome 24-31 Firefox 18–26 Internet Explorer 11 Opera 15-18 Safari 7 2014 Google Chrome 32 Firefox 27 Opera 19   Related topics 3D Markup Language for Web Aliweb ARPANET ASCII BITNET Browser wars CompuServe Elm Email File Transfer Protocol Gopher HTML HyperCard HyTelnet NCSA Telnet NLS Prodigy Teletext Telnet Usenet UUCP Videotex Viewdata Virtual Reality Markup Language Web page Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog World Wide Web X.25