Browser wars
A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war" occurred between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and the "second browser war" between Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome.
With the introduction of HTML5 in 2008 and CSS 3 in 2011, a new generation of browser wars began, this time considering extensive client-side scripting to the World Wide Web, and the more widespread use of smartphones and other mobile devices for web browsing. These changes have ensured that browser battles continue among enthusiasts, while the average web user is less affected.
Background
, along with his colleagues at CERN, started the development of the Internet-based hypertext system WWW in 1989. Their studies led to the creation of the HyperText Transfer Protocol, which set the protocols for client-server communication. In 1990, Berners-Lee created the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, subsequently known as Nexus, and made it available for the NeXTstep Operating System, by NeXT.Other browsers started to surface by the end of 1992, many of which were based on the Libwww library. These included MacWWW/Samba for the Mac and Unix browsers including Line Mode Browser, ViolaWWW, Erwise, and MidasWWW. These browsers were HTML viewers that needed third-party helpers to display multimedia content.
Mosaic wars
In 1993, more browsers became available, including Cello, Lynx, tkWWW, and Mosaic. The most influential of these was Mosaic, a multi-platform browser developed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications. By October 1994, Mosaic was "well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface", according to Gary Wolfe of Wired.Several companies licensed Mosaic to create their commercial browsers, such as AirMosaic, Quarterdeck Mosaic, 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 Communications Corporation, and the browser Netscape Navigator. 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, SlipKnot, MacWeb, and Browse.
While Netscape faced new competition from OmniWeb, Eolas WebRouser, UdiWWW, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 1.0, it continued to dominate the market for 1995.
First browser war (1995–2001)
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, which had released with Microsoft Windows 95 Plus! on August 24, 1995.Unlike Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer 1.0 was available to all Windows users free of charge, including commercial companies. Other companies later followed suit and released their browsers free of charge. Netscape Navigator and competitor products like InternetWorks, Quarterdeck Browser, InterAp, and WinTapestry were bundled with other applications to full Internet suites.
New versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape were released often over the following few years. New features were routinely added, including Netscape's JavaScript and proprietary HTML tags such as
<blink> and <marquee>.Internet Explorer 3 provided services nearly identical to its competitor, Netscape, offering scripting support and implementing the market's first commercial Cascading Style Sheets support.
On September 22, 1997, Internet Explorer 4 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, paired with greeting card signed "Best wishes, the IE team". 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", referencing the companies' market share.
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 and 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 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 Internet Explorer as their preferred browser while making some attempt to support minimal functionality on the other.
While Netscape had accrued about 75% of the market share within four months of its release, as a relatively small company deriving the great bulk of its income from what was essentially a single product, 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.
Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows, which had over a 95% share of the desktop operating system market in June 2004, 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; any difference in browser features or ergonomics paled in comparison with the set of abilities they had gained with access to the Internet and the World Wide Web.
During the United States Microsoft antitrust case in 1998, Intel vice president Steven McGeady 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 was acquired by America Online for 4.2 billion dollars. Internet Explorer became the new dominant browser, attaining a peak of over 90% of the web browser usage share in 2001.
Second browser war (2004–2017)
Decline of Netscape and entry of Firefox
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 — 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, was created. The browser-only version was initially named Phoenix, but because of trademark issues that name was changed, first to Firebird, then to Firefox. Phoenix was chosen because "Phoenix", implied that it would rise like a phoenix after Netscape Navigator was killed off by Microsoft. This browser became the focus of the Mozilla Foundation's development efforts. Mozilla's Firefox 1 was released on November 9, 2004, and it then continued to gain an increasing share of the browser market until a peak of around 24% in 2010.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. 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.
The growing number of device/browser combinations in use, legally-mandated web accessibility, as well as the expansion of expected web functionality to essentially require DOM and scripting abilities, including AJAX, made web standards of increasing importance during this era. Instead of advertising their proprietary extensions, browser developers began to market their software based on how closely it adhered to standards.
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.
Internet Explorer
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 web applications.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. The announcement introduced the new version of the browser as a major upgrade over Internet Explorer 6 SP1.
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 long familiar to Opera and Firefox users. Microsoft distributed Internet Explorer 7 to genuine Windows users as a high-priority update through Windows Update. 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. 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, and improved support for various web standards. It was the last version of Internet Explorer to be released for Windows XP. Internet Explorer 8 scored 20/100 in the Acid3 test, which was much worse than all major competitors at the time.
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.
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 on March 14, 2011. It featured a revamped interface, support for the basic SVG feature set, and partial HTML video support, among other new features. It dropped support for Windows XP, and only ran on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and 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 dropped Vista and Phone 7 support. The release preview of Internet Explorer 11 was released on September 17, 2013. It supported the same desktops as its predecessor.
Starting in 2015 with the release of Windows 10, Microsoft shifted from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Edge Legacy|Microsoft Edge . However, the new browser had failed to capture much popularity, thus Microsoft Edge switched from its own browser engine, EdgeHTML, to Chromium's Blink engine in 2020 for all platforms except for iOS, where it kept relying on WebKit due to platform restrictions.