Blog

A Brief History of Web Browsers by Popularity

Web browsers have allowed people to access the web and view websites since the early 1990s. In the early days you had browsers like Netscape to navigate the world wide web. But, the browser could not keep up with the rapidly changing environment and other, better browsers took over.

Microsoft created their own browser called Internet Explorer in the 1990’s. It was better than other browsers and simply got the job done. But, it had security issues. It allowed websites which it was viewing to execute scripts that accessed the client’s computer and this helped add to the computer virus problem.

Microsoft included this browser with every copy of Windows , already installed on most computers. This lead to IE becoming the most popular browser in the world and it wasn’t even close. It also lead to anti-monopoly lawsuits. Microsoft got lazy and sloppy however. They were not listening to what people wanted and they were not offering anything new and exciting. This lead to the explosion of popularity in other, newer web browsers.

Google would launch Chrome and this browser quickly took over. It is an open-source browser which allows other companies to base their own browser on its unique code. Brave is a popular browser which does this. And interestingly enough, Microsoft’s newest browser, Edge, is based on the chromium program as well.

In actuality Edge is slightly better than just regular chrome in that it is slimmer and faster. And even though MS took Google’s browser and made it better, people just don’t trust MS anymore. They had their chance and they blew it. That is the bottom line.

[table id=1 /]

Note: The percentages provided in the table are approximate and may vary depending on the data source used.