A Final Goodbye

A web browser is also referred to as an Internet browser or just a browser. It is application software for accessing the World Wide Web.  When a user requests a web page from a website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then displays the page on the user’s device.

In the Beginning

The first web browser was just called ‘WorldWideWeb’ when it was written in 1990 it was the only way to see the web. It was also a browser editor. It could be used to create web pages as well as browse websites. It was eventually renamed Nexus in order to save confusion between the program and the abstract information space www, which is now the World Wide Web. In the early 90s, we used Netscape Navigator as a proprietary web browser. It was the dominant web browser in terms of usage in the 1990s, Around 2003 its use had almost disappeared. The reason why was, due to the fact that Microsoft preloaded Internet Explorer on every computer it sold and it was placed right on the start-up page! Genius!

Microsoft was a software company in the early days. It made money by licensing its operating system to computer manufacturers and by selling products that worked with that operating system. The most well-known are Word and Excel.  In the early 2000s, Internet Explorer controlled 95% of the web browsing market.

Browser changed

Most people stopped using IE as their browsers years ago with the emergence of Firefox and Chrome. Of course, we had the diehard last holdouts. As someone who has devoted my career to the web, I had many conversations over the last many years with my clients letting them know that they need to switch browsers. Internet Explorer was no longer keeping things up to date and it was slow, prone to crashing, and vulnerable to hacks. It just wasn’t keeping up with the pace of competitors such as Google Chrome. Internet Explorer AKA IE.

Internet Explorer served from August 1995 to June 2022. It was a slow death but now it has dearly departed once and for all. It had a good 27-year run! 

These days, Google’s Chrome browser dominates the world of browsers with roughly a 65% share of the worldwide browser market, followed by Apple’s Safari with roughly 20%.

There are a lot of options to explore the internet these days.  Below is the current top ten list. As all thing’s web-related, this could change tomorrow!

• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Edge
• Apple Safari
• Opera
• Brave
• Vivaldi
• DuckDuckgo
• Chromium
• Epic

As always, Grateful Web Services is here to help you get your website on the World Wide Web or if your website needs updating, we are here to help take the chore off of your shoulders. It’s easy to forget that your website is on display 24/7. Even if you aren’t looking at it, potential customers could be.