History of Internet Browsers

The tool that we use to browse our favorite websites has a (relatively) long and rich history rife with battles for market shares and dominance. This is a look into the past major events in the web browser industry.

1991 worldwide web browser is released

worldwide web, renamed to Nexus to avoid confusion with the www system, was the first graphical web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor.

It was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web.

1993 Mosaic is released

Mosaic is credited with popularizing the internet and introducing the web to the public.

Contemporaries such as Internet Explorer and Firefox still use many of the graphical user interface (GUI) characteristics of Mosaic such as a top-oriented actions bar that provides basic browsing functionalities.

1994 Netscape is formed

Marc Andreessen – lead software engineer of Mosaic- ventures out on his own, forming Netscape and releasing the first commercial web browser: Netscape Navigator.

1995 Internet Explorer, 1^st Browser War

Microsoft answers the released of Navigator with its own browser, called Internet Explorer, effectively starting off the first browser war for market dominance.

1996 Opera is released to the public

Telenor, the largest Opera to the public. Two years later, it tries to grab a hold of the internet-enabled handheld device market, starting a port of Opera to mobile device platforms.

 1998 Mozilla is formed

Nerscape starts the open source Mozilla project to develop the next generation of Communicator. It becomes evident that a project built around the existing source code was difficult, so focus shifts to building from scratch.

1998 Netscape’s browser goes open source

Losing traction over Internet Explorer, Netscape decides to release the source code of communicator in the hopes of becoming a popular open source project.

2002 IE usage reaches dominating proportions

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer reaches a 95% share, having advantage of being bundled with the Windows operating system. The first browser war ends with IE being the triumphant browser.

2003 Apple’s Safari makes its debut

Apple joins the scene with the released of Safari. It introduces a solid layout engine called Webkit which has been adopted into many mobile devices including Google and Nokia phones.

2004 Firefox 1.0 is released & 2^nd Browser War

Firefox 1.0, already with huge following of early adopters via their beta releases, enters the stage. The second browser war starts, indicated by a slipping market share of Internet Explorer. Firefox comprises 7.4% of browsers being used by the end of the year.

2006 Internet Explorer 7 is released

Five years after IE 6, Microsoft releases version 7 of their browser, adopting some features from its open source competition (firefox) such as tabbed browsing and anti-phising protection.

2008 – Present -  Google Chrome, Browse War intensifies

Google launches its own web browser, entering into the browser battles in the market share, Lightweight. Fast, and surprisingly stable compared to early releases of other web browsers, the second browser war gains another strong competitor.