This is the first in a series of articles regarding the "gold rush" in the browsers market. A rush that has been mounting for the past 2 years and it is now in the peak with the imminent (final) releases of Microsoft's IE8 and Google's Chrome, against the all and mighty FireFox (that managed to overcome the obstacle of 20% market share), the iRising Safari and Opera! The journey of the Browser Wars begins now...

Short Intro

Although the WWW (world wide web) or in other words all the websites you are visiting, is not the internet, it's the most famous, glamorous and interesting part of it. Internet is much more than the WWW...it's: mails, torrents, newsgroups, chat-rooms, VoIP/Instant Messaging Services, FTPs and many many more interesting things that are not subjects of the current article. But from all the "expressions" of the web WWW draws the most attention out of all, it's the one thing that everybody understands best and it's the Mecca of our future social life (that's a nice quote :P). After the theoretical arrival of Web 2.0 (no I am not talking about rounded rectangles, gradients and drop shadows), the WWW has grown from a place of information, entertainment and business to a gargantuan mall that offers you fun, socialization, interactivity, communication, expression, recognition and so much more! The web is evolving every day, new ideas add up and create new worlds and the most important thing of all it consumes all other mass media competitors (press, TV, radio) while it keeps growing tirelessly with exponential rates.

To understand the magnitude and the "size" of internet, see the following chart that illustrates the number of hosts that serve on the internet from 1981 to 2008, based on the statistics of ISC (Internet Systems Consortium).

Note: The other type of metric that someone could use to calculate the "size" of internet, would be the number of catalogued pages from search engines (mainly Google & Yahoo). I think that number of hosts reflects better the "size" of internet, since they take more factors as consideration (number of pages, traffic, databases, files etc).

Browser and the Web

Now that I've made clear the importance and significance of the web, let us discover the role of browsers. The browsers are to the world wide web, what remote controls are to televisions. It is a mean to an end, it's the everyday tool/instrument/companion that we use to access the most important creation in the human history (it's a little bit exaggerated, but I truly believe that the internet is the most important creation in our history). So browsers are important, they are wrapping the www in very nice package and offer it in the best way possible. Browsers are helping us traverse the web, organize it, interact with it and finally become a part of it. As browsers evolve so does the web. It would be nice to proclaim that: "Whoever controls the browsers, controls the web" (stolen from Dune: "He who controls the Spice, controls the Universe", Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), but it is not exactly the case...

Browser Wars

Browsers are a very important part of the web, but thank god they will never control it (don't quote me in the future if I am proven terribly wrong :P). The first and more important reason is that currently there are too many of them, the story began with NetScape and Internet Explorer and now we have 2 major players and 3 outsiders. The two major players are: Microsoft's Internet Explorer is (unfortunately) still the unquestionable leader in the market, followed by the eager and much promising FireFox of the Mozilla Corporation. The three outsiders are the lone ranger Opera, the sleeping giant Safari powered by Apple and the fans of iPhone and finally the new kid on the block, Chrome the latest weapon in Google's arsenal...Google the king of the web! This is the current battlefield and the warriors are marching head first to the battle. Before I unravel some weird scenarios regarding the evolution of browsers and the www, let's see an interesting graph regarding the share of each browser in the web bazaar!

Browser Market Share November 2008

Commenting and interpreting the Browser Market Share

Before we complete part 1 of our series, allow me to throw some quick bullets regarding the graph above:

• The most important thing that everyone should know before trying to interpret the above, is that the most important factor that has been, is and will be affecting the browser wars is Windows, Microsoft's operating system that dominates the market.
• Internet Explorer is the unquestionable leader in the market mainly because Microsoft monopolizes the Operating Systems market with Windows. Most users IE because it's the only thing they see or know! For the past 5 years that I web design the greatest problem that I face every day is Internet Explorer 6, that accursed piece of software is sooo fucking annoying (regarding issues of CSS compatibility) that I will hate Microsoft for as long as I leave. The worst parts in this story is that a) Internet Explorer is expected to hold an important part of the market at least up until 2010 (oh god please save us!) b) a lot of stupid old bastards are programming critical websites and web services only for IE(!), at least that's what is happening in Greece.
• FireFox, the heir of great old mighty NetScape is steadily increasing his market share but it has a lot of competitors and not much of support (see the graphical representation bellow).
• Safari, powered by the rising empire of Apple/Disney/Pixar and iEverything (iPod, iPhone, iTunes...iAmTiredOfTheseNames) will surely play an important role in the future of the web mainly because, Macs are the second OS in the market and due to iPhone's success.
• Opera has a very low penetration in the browser market and I believe it will further decrease mainly due to hard competition Chrome, Safari. Another reason is that Opera (just like FireFox) has no major support on its back!
• Our final and latests player in the market is Chrome the new child of Google, that I think it will evolve and match it services/features with the services of Google RIAs, like Gmail, GoogleDesktop, GoogleMaps, YouTube and so on.

That's all for now...stay put for part 2 of our series The Browser Wars!

Best regards,
Nikos “DuMmWiaM” Kontis