Google enters the browser arena

We often hear the phrase “history repeats itself” when talking about the evolution of mankind. Well, it seems that this principle is equally true for the evolution of technology. When it comes to browser software, it’s 1996 all over again! Well, that’s not completely true. Let’s roll back for a second to see what has happened in the last 3-4 years.

Since Microsoft’s Internet Explorer won the first installment of the browser war over Netscape’s Communicator during the late 90′s, we haven’t seen much innovation in the browser’s market. Microsoft succeeded into making Internet Explorer the “universal” web browser on Earth, and, with version 6, it decided there was nothing more to invent in that space.

But in 2001, just like a Phoenix bird is born again from its own ashes, a new browser was born from the ashes of Internet Explorer’s old rival Netscape Communicator, called Mozilla. But Mozilla was more than just a browser, it was an “Internet suite”, composed by a web browser, an e-mail client, a web page editor and an IRC client. Unfortunately Mozilla didn’t gain wide adoption, mostly because it was big and slow and offered too much functionality that ordinary Internet users simply didn’t need. At that point Internet Explorer was still the king of the browsers.

But the efforts put into the development of Mozilla weren’t totally wasted. A few years later the browser resurrected once again from its ashes, in the form of a new project ironically called “Phoenix”. Sadly that name didn’t last long because of trademark issues, and neither did the second one, “Firebird”. The final choice landed on “Firefox”. Firefox has been developed since the start in 2003 as an open source project, and is backed up by the same company that was behind the original Mozilla called Mozilla Corporation.

Firefox’s initial mission statement was to be a “lean and mean browsing machine” with the minimal functionality required for navigation (address bar, bookmarks, history) and strong focus on achieving high web page rendering speed. These features, together with better W3C standard compliance, feature innovation, multi-platform support and a large community of add-ons developers to extend its functionality, became a key selling point for Firefox.

The browser’s diffusion among the Internet users grew constantly since it’s initial release in 2004, slowly corroding Internet Explorer’s hegemony. This finally got to Microsoft’s attention, which reacted by (finally) releasing a new version of its aging browser, Windows Internet Explorer 7, trying to keep up with the many innovations introduced by Firefox.

A new browser war was started, with two main contenders, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer once again on one side, and Mozilla’s Firefox on the other. Until now.

Fast forward to Tuesday September 2nd, 2008. Google shocks the world by announcing the release of the company’s own brand-new open source browser, called Google Chrome. According to the product team, Chrome was designed and built from the ground up to match the demands of  today’s Internet, characterized by rich browser-centered web applications powered by JavaScript. Once again, the main focus is on minimal design, compliance with web standards and performance.

Google Chrome is a beta release, but from my experience with it so far, I would say it’s in a good position to permanently replace Firefox as my main day-to-day browser. I’ll write more about my thoughts on Chrome as I spend more time with it.

/Enrico

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Enrico Campidoglio

Hi, I'm Enrico Campidoglio. I'm a freelance programmer, trainer and mentor focusing on helping teams develop software better. I write this blog because I love sharing stories about the things I know. You can read more about me here, if you like.