Web Browsers

By Wayne Maruna

When it comes to computer usage, you can pretty much count on two fundamental activities taking place on every computer:  reading and sending email, and browsing the World Wide Web. 

Yet when I ask people what web browser they use, an amazing number of people have no clue.  So I ask, when you want to go to ‘the web’, what program do you use?  If I’m lucky, I may get an answer like ‘the e’.  So I think a little Web Browser 101 might be in order this month.

Interestingly (to me), the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s first definition for ‘browse’ reads:

“to eat (tender shoots, twigs, leaves of trees and shrubs, etc.)“.

Hmmm, no, as much as I’m in favor of eating, I don’t think that’s what we’re after.  Let’s try definition #2: “to look over casually: to skim, e.g. browsing the want ads”

We’re getting warmer, but let’s try #3: “to access (a network) by means of a browser”

Well OK, but that’s a bit circular, don’t you think?  Let’s turn to our history books instead.

British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee (not a Sir at the time) is credited with inventing the world wide web and its first program for navigating the web, called, oddly enough, ‘WorldWideWeb’, beginning in 1989.  By 1993, Marc Andreessen had created a graphical browser that became known as Mosaic and which ran on several home and office computers.  Because it could display both text and graphics, it opened the way for multimedia content and really started the internet boom. The history of web browsers reads something like the first chapter of Matthew, where Mosaic begat Netscape, and Netscape begat Mozilla, and Mozilla begat Firefox, and….well, you get the picture.

My old go-to source, Wikepedia, says: “A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web.” That works for me.

            People of a certain age will remember when Netscape Navigator ruled the roost in the browser world with as much as a 75% market share.  And this was when you had to PAY for Netscape.  Along came Microsoft which offered their Internet Explorer for FREE, and then bundled it with Windows.  Within four years, Internet Explorer had over 90% market share.

There remain numerous web browser applications in existence, but just a half dozen account for nearly all browsing activity.  Percentages of market share by browser vary depending on who’s counting and whether one counts only desktop computers or includes all platforms including smart phones and tablets.  Taking the all-inclusive desktop and mobile device view, approximate statistics for October, 2017 are shown below:

Google Chrome: roughly 48% to 55%. That’s the icon with red/yellow/green circle and the blue center.

Apple’s Safari, 14% to 21%, largely as a result of including tablets and phones. The icon is a compass.

Firefox, between 6 and 7%. The icon has an orange fox wrapped around a blue globe.

Internet Explorer, between 4 and 8%. The icon is a light blue ‘e’ with a golden halo.

Microsoft Edge (Windows 10 only), about 2%.  The icon is a dark blue ‘e’, no halo.  

Opera, between 1 and 4%. A big red ‘O’ constitutes its icon, and closely indicates its market share, though it is a decent browser.

As of October, 2017, browser usage on mobile platforms (phones and tablets) now exceeds usage on desktop machines. That factoid amazed me.

What makes one browser superior to another?  The people behind every browser will cite some advantage, often page rendering speed or security or memory consumption, but they can’t all be the fastest and the safest with the least memory consumed.  Different testing sites seem to come to different conclusions.  But clearly, based on the statistics above which reflect literally billions of ‘hits’ per month, Chrome is the undisputed favorite. If we examined usage just on desktop machines, Chrome would come in around 60%.

Personally, I use Chrome as my main browser because on one screen I have access to the web, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Drive, and a host of other ‘extensions’.  My #2 favorite is Firefox.  Even Microsoft doesn’t want you to use Internet Explorer; they are pushing Windows 10 users hard to move to Edge. With only 2% overall market share (4.5% in desktop browser share), you can see how that’s working for them.  I also detest the MSN homepage that comes as the default with both I.E. and Edge.  It purports to be news but looks more like a daily celebrity expose, and I really couldn’t care less what Kim and Kanye or George and Amal are up to today or who wore what ‘jaw-dropping’ dress to some event. It’s easy enough to change the home page, but it still annoys me.

Then there are people who want nothing to do with Google because they think Google is out to control the world, or at least the part that Amazon doesn’t already control.  Speaking of Amazon, they have a proprietary web browser called ‘Silk’ which runs only on their Fire line of tablets, but Silk barely registers a blip at reported 0.1% browser share.