The invention of World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee combined the hypertext and internet paving way for the assortment of the vast pool of information with easy to use and flexible formats thus popularizing the use of Internet across the globe. Routing HyperCard and Gopher, WWW revolutionized the web experience and laid down a guided platform for various designers and engineers for development of web standards.
In 1991, Berners-Lee designed the world’s first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor named Nexus that used both FTP and HTP protocols. However the turning point for WWW began with the introduction of multiplatform Mosaic in 1993 which was licensed by companies to create their commercial web browsers. Following stepped in Netscape Navigator as a major competitor in 1994 and even with Internet Explorer1.0 in 1995, the former continued to be the market leader until 1997. However the IE 4 integration into the Microsoft Windows shifted the tides of browser dominance. After 2001 IE 6 then led the browser marketplace pertaining to 90% market share of MS Windows and free web browser for its users.
The next in line came IE 7 in 2006 with major upgrades and enhancements like phishing filters and improved support for web standards and much more.
However amidst the whole war of ascendancy, the routed Netscape open sourced their browser code and Mozilla foundation worked significantly finally developing Mozilla Firefox 1.0 in 2004. In 2006 with phishing filters, session restore feature and spell checker for text field, Firefox 2.0 began to draw itself closer to the prolonged market leader IE6. This had sparked the fall of IE monopoly. Also Apple too joined the browser league with its Safari for Mac platform and in 2007 released Safari 3 for MS Windows.
Typical market share analysis showed only a slow uptake of Internet Explorer 7, and after statistics in 2007 from showed Mozilla Firefox at 36.3% had taken over from Internet Explorer 6 at 33.6% as the most popular browser with Internet Explorer 7 lagging behind in third place at 20.8%.
Finally 2008 marked the release of Firefox 3.0 and open source Google Chrome too made its entry into the browser world few months later and gained 3.2% usage by September 2009. Also chasing its competitors, Internet Explorer 8 made its way with added accelerators, improved privacy protection and so on but failed to regain its lost crown in the browser war. Here are few statistics for the evidence.
The chart above declares Firefox a clear winner, giving IE second place and Chrome being at third position. 
An appealing and edifying distinctions among the top three position holders, TechRadar points out at 4 basic issues of usability, expandability, performance and security.
Firefox cited as the king of extensions grabs the expandability tiara while IE8 with its Accelerators manages to shoulder Firefox slightly. However Chrome sits back with its usual content plug-in- Flash etc. Performance wise the benchmarks declared Chrome a winner with very trivial differences between the browser trio. Few stats from SixRevisions highlight these variations.
Dealing the security issues Chrome and IE8 go hand in hand but Firefox’s private browsing via third party extension keeps it in the second row. However missing ad blocking feature in Chrome pushes it away from its triumph. As for the usability concerns the three give each other a sturdy fight.
So concluding one browser as the best is not an easy task and since the above results may only be confined to Windows these browsers may give all together a new experience on Mac platform. Also Safari and Opera too although not included in the comparisons but are speeding in and are much widely accepted and used. What probably went wrong for IE? Slow speed and RAM hogging may be significant issues behind the collapse but it is also true that that IE8 is vastly improved over IE 7 and 6, one of my favorite features being automatically organizing the tabs by color-coding. (However I am a regular Chrome user.) Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine gives it speed which many of us often ask for. But hundreds of extensions available and ability to create your own make Firefox much more than just a browser. Although not as fast as Opera, Firefox does have great built in functions and add-on options. It is also more stable.
Though Internet Explorer banished Netscape Communicator to oblivion in the browser war of the 90s, it has found a much tougher foe in Firefox. In fact, over the years, Firefox has steadily been eating into the share of the world’s most popular browser. Also Google now has two browsers in its kitty – Firefox and Chrome. It’s endorsed and promoted the former in the free Google software pack and via the Adsense program as a referral product. And considering Firefox as one of its product seeing how it has encouraged the browser in past, by bringing out Chrome is Google in the danger of self-cannibalization? I think ultimately this competition is good. The advances that Google Chrome and even Safari (as Apple doesn’t sit back against its rivals), will bring to the table are huge to the browser space. They are very fast apps – and that’s going to force the other browsers as well to focus on performance. We as users just yearn for the preeminent web experience.
Sources: History – Wikipedia.
Source – Global Thoughts Research
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