It has been exactly one year and one day since my last post here. I just read through my previous post and found that I was remarkably prescient concerning the Rangers 2010 success:
Barring a miraculous comeback, this Rangers team appears to be headed to a 9th consecutive season without a playoff appearance. It appears, however, that they have very good chance to stop that streak before it hits 10.
This isn't my first rodeo in the sports prediction business either. I also predicted that the 2001 Mavericks would make the playoffs for the first time in 10 years and that the 2007 Mavericks would have the best record in the NBA. I have witnesses.
Moving on -- I want to get my dork on and discuss web browsers. With Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 in beta, I am actually excited about the evolution of web browsers going forward for the first time in a very long while. We have come a remarkably long way from the dark days where 90% of the world used Internet Explorer, despite its substantial technical inferiority to just about every other browser on the market.
I have decided to put together a small history of the web browser because I believe the current era of browsers is unique in the short history of the world wide web. Without further adieu, here we go, in awesome, awkward present tense bullet points:
The Netscape Era -- 1994-1998
- Netscape Navigator takes out NCSA Mosaic with innovations like javascript and frames. In 1996, Netscape reaches a dominant market share of nearly 80% at which point innovation stagnates.
TheDark Internet Explorer Era -- 1999-2004
- Microsoft, sensing a threat from Netscape, pours a bunch of money into the development of Internet Explorer. They come up with a few new ideas, but generally just copy Netscape and gain market share by bundling IE with Windows.
- IE eventually grabs 90%+ market share and Microsoft, resting on its laurels, disbands the Internet Explorer development team, effectively putting a halt to all browser innovation for years
- Netscape's browser undergoes a complete rewrite and its new codebase is released as open source. The Mozilla Foundation is formed to manage the open source project. Mozilla begins releasing a new product called "Mozilla Application Suite" which was modeled after Netscape's old Communicator all-in-one browser/email/composer product. Netscape releases versions 6 and 7 based on the Mozilla suite, with version 6 famously based on a pre-release quality version of Mozilla (version 0.6). The public, expecting one last hurrah from Netscape, is disappointed with the pre-release quality of Netscape 6. Netscape 7 is then released based on Mozilla's 1.0 version, but the public takes little notice. Mozilla, meanwhile, continues developing its rendering engine under the radar and makes regular releases of the Mozilla Suite, none of which garner much attention -- that is, until Mozilla changes its tack by creating a new, light-weight browser called Firefox.
The Firefox Era -- 2005-2008
- Firefox 1.0 is released on November 9, 2004 and, due to the fact that IE innovation is virtually non-existent, quickly and easily establishes itself as a vastly superior product. Tech savvy people take notice and Firefox eventually gains 20-25% market share. Despite Mozilla's efforts, IE continues to dominate, albeit to a lesser degree, by virtue of Microsoft's operating system monopoly, but is so clearly inferior that Microsoft engineers even admit as much publicly.
- After reaching ~25% market share, Mozilla's innovation machine seems to run out of steam. Microsoft releases versions 7 and 8 of Internet Explorer, but these are so feeble (especially version 7) that Firefox's superiority isn't really threatened despite Mozilla's relative stagnation.
- Apple launches Safari, but doesn't make much of a splash in terms of market share or innovation. (This is not to say that Safari was bad -- it just wasn't terribly original.) Actually, Safari was released in 2003, but the Windows version didn't launch until 2007. To this day, Safari's primary innovation was acceptable Mac OS X performance (which IE and Firefox did not provide at the time). The Windows version of Safari has never brought much of anything to the table, except for its WebKit rendering engine which became the foundation for Google Chrome.
The Chrome Era -- 2009 - ?
- Google releases Chrome on December 11, 2008, bringing major innovations with their new UI design and super-fast javascript engine. While Chrome's market share doesn't exactly explode, Google is extremely aggressive in Chrome's development. Meanwhile, unlike previous times in history, the existing browsers don't appear to be willing to let Chrome win without a fight. Mozilla and Microsoft are both beta testing new major releases of Firefox and Internet Explorer, each of which takes several of Chrome's ideas and attempts to improve on them. Apple released Safari 5 in June and is probably secretly preparing another release to keep pace.
This is really the first time that there has been more than 1 major company (i.e. not counting Opera) doing the innovating. In the Netscape era, only Netscape innovated. In the Internet Explorer era, nobody innovated. In the Firefox era, only Mozilla innovated. Now, however, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla are all innovating which is pretty exciting. Competition is definitely the driving force behind innovation. If you think about it, it's really amazing that it's taken over 15 years for us to have a healthy, competitive web browser market.
- Netscape Navigator takes out NCSA Mosaic with innovations like javascript and frames. In 1996, Netscape reaches a dominant market share of nearly 80% at which point innovation stagnates.
The
- Microsoft, sensing a threat from Netscape, pours a bunch of money into the development of Internet Explorer. They come up with a few new ideas, but generally just copy Netscape and gain market share by bundling IE with Windows.
- IE eventually grabs 90%+ market share and Microsoft, resting on its laurels, disbands the Internet Explorer development team, effectively putting a halt to all browser innovation for years
- Netscape's browser undergoes a complete rewrite and its new codebase is released as open source. The Mozilla Foundation is formed to manage the open source project. Mozilla begins releasing a new product called "Mozilla Application Suite" which was modeled after Netscape's old Communicator all-in-one browser/email/composer product. Netscape releases versions 6 and 7 based on the Mozilla suite, with version 6 famously based on a pre-release quality version of Mozilla (version 0.6). The public, expecting one last hurrah from Netscape, is disappointed with the pre-release quality of Netscape 6. Netscape 7 is then released based on Mozilla's 1.0 version, but the public takes little notice. Mozilla, meanwhile, continues developing its rendering engine under the radar and makes regular releases of the Mozilla Suite, none of which garner much attention -- that is, until Mozilla changes its tack by creating a new, light-weight browser called Firefox.
The Firefox Era -- 2005-2008
- Firefox 1.0 is released on November 9, 2004 and, due to the fact that IE innovation is virtually non-existent, quickly and easily establishes itself as a vastly superior product. Tech savvy people take notice and Firefox eventually gains 20-25% market share. Despite Mozilla's efforts, IE continues to dominate, albeit to a lesser degree, by virtue of Microsoft's operating system monopoly, but is so clearly inferior that Microsoft engineers even admit as much publicly.
- After reaching ~25% market share, Mozilla's innovation machine seems to run out of steam. Microsoft releases versions 7 and 8 of Internet Explorer, but these are so feeble (especially version 7) that Firefox's superiority isn't really threatened despite Mozilla's relative stagnation.
- Apple launches Safari, but doesn't make much of a splash in terms of market share or innovation. (This is not to say that Safari was bad -- it just wasn't terribly original.) Actually, Safari was released in 2003, but the Windows version didn't launch until 2007. To this day, Safari's primary innovation was acceptable Mac OS X performance (which IE and Firefox did not provide at the time). The Windows version of Safari has never brought much of anything to the table, except for its WebKit rendering engine which became the foundation for Google Chrome.
The Chrome Era -- 2009 - ?
- Google releases Chrome on December 11, 2008, bringing major innovations with their new UI design and super-fast javascript engine. While Chrome's market share doesn't exactly explode, Google is extremely aggressive in Chrome's development. Meanwhile, unlike previous times in history, the existing browsers don't appear to be willing to let Chrome win without a fight. Mozilla and Microsoft are both beta testing new major releases of Firefox and Internet Explorer, each of which takes several of Chrome's ideas and attempts to improve on them. Apple released Safari 5 in June and is probably secretly preparing another release to keep pace.
This is really the first time that there has been more than 1 major company (i.e. not counting Opera) doing the innovating. In the Netscape era, only Netscape innovated. In the Internet Explorer era, nobody innovated. In the Firefox era, only Mozilla innovated. Now, however, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla are all innovating which is pretty exciting. Competition is definitely the driving force behind innovation. If you think about it, it's really amazing that it's taken over 15 years for us to have a healthy, competitive web browser market.
Finally, I would be remiss to discuss the history of the web browser without mentioning Opera. Opera has been a major innovating force in the background during all of the abovementioned eras. Version 1.0 of Opera was released in 1994 around the same time Netscape was founded. Many of the new features credited to mainstream browsers were actually lifted from Opera -- most notably tabbed browsing which most people probably assume was Mozilla's idea. There have been several times since 1994 when Opera arguably had the best browser, but it never really gained much adoption, in large part because they tried to charge for it while IE was free. Opera faces a pretty tall task going forward. In 2001, it was easy to create the best web browser, but now Opera has to compete with the three biggest names in tech (Google, Microsoft, and Apple) all of whom are putting major resources into their respective browsers, plus Mozilla which continues to be the standard-bearer of the free software/open source movement. Despite this onslaught, the latest version of Opera is fairly competitive with the mainstream browsers. It will be interesting to see if they can keep up.
