Karen M. Boney |
The Internet, World Wide Web, and web browsers… these are words that were virtually unknown to the average citizen only twenty years ago. Today, however, they represent integral parts of today’s society and how it gets information, handles daily activities, and communicates with other members of society. It is difficult not to see these elements affecting nearly every aspect of an individual’s daily life.
The average user accesses information on the Internet with the help of a web browser. Most users are not actively involved in the choice of their browser as the most common browser, Internet Explorer, comes with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Most users are neither informed nor interested in their browsers' history, how it came to be on their operating system, or the incredible struggle that has amassed its claim to existence. The only issue that may be of importance to the end user is the fact that their browser can affect their ability to access information. Different browsers can display information completely differently, rendering some web pages unreadable if viewed from the “wrong” browser. These differences are the result of a war between browser vendors and their various marketing efforts (Alexander 16).
The purpose of this paper is to explain and explore this history, the history of “the browser wars,” and to provide an understanding of what can be learned from them and expected from them in the future as these dynamic wars continue.
Before the Internet became a household necessity like the telephone or automobiles, “surfing the web” was not possible as we know it today. According to Paul Bleicher, “The year 1994 marked the transition of the Internet from an academic and government-oriented network into a commercial marketplace where stores could show their wares in catalogs” Bleicher. MOSAIC was designed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, (NCSA), and brought “a new level of user friendliness to Internet access” (Rivera). In 1994 the MOSAIC web browser boasted the first “point and click” technology and ushered in the competition of user-friendly graphical interfaces viewable through browser technology. New capabilities offered by the MOSAIC browser included providing a graphical interface, allowing access to multimedia information, and the retention of a search history of sites visited by users. Most importantly, MOSAIC “eliminated the need [for the user] to learn arcane commands” in order to access the Internet and its wealth of information (Rivera). These new options made the Internet and the World Wide Web less threatening, as users no longer needed to search through hierarchal menu structures, but instead could access information through hypertext links.(Rivera).
Now that getting online required less technological expertise, the public demand for web browsers rose and each browser company strove to make their browser unique to corner the market through product specialization.
As stated by Elizabeth Castro:
In 1994, Netscape put up the first fences on the Web in the so-called browser wars. In order to attract users, they threw universality to the wind and created a set of extensions to HTML that only Netscape could handle. By 1996, [Netscape] had become the most popular computer program in the world. (16)
This time frame marked the beginning of the browser wars as Microsoft continued to develop its Internet Explorer browser for direct competition with Netscape. Already outdated and obsolete, MOSAIC was soon abandoned for further development of the Netscape browser. In 1997, Netscape’s browser market share was 72%, with Internet Explorer’s trailing at 18%. Victory was short-lived by Netscape, however, as Microsoft quickly developed the morally questionable but marketing genius business strategy of offering its Internet Explorer browser free and pre-installed with its Windows operating system.
The bundling technique was an incredible advantage for Microsoft and not difficult to maintain, as its main source of income was through the production of its widely used Windows operating system. Netscape and other competing browsers had no hope competing with this strategy, since they would have no funding if they offered their browser software for free. However, because this marketing strategy worked so well, in 1999 the United States government filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft to preserve competitive markets. Unfortunately, by this time Netscape had already lost the majority of its patrons to Microsoft and had released the source code to its browser (Hammersly).
The Microsoft team reveled in their bright future after the Windows 98 release party by planting a nearly 10-foot “E,” the Explorer’s desktop icon, onto the front lawn of Netscape’s new owners, Mozilla. Although Mozilla and the majority of Explorer’s competition were all but extinct, the Mozilla team continued to work on their software and developed the light browser Firefox that will be discussed later in this paper. But for now and to this date, Explorer remains king of the browser hill.
How much did early users know about browsers and the Internet? Very little. How much did the average user want to know about browsers? Again, very little. Microsoft correctly responded to this and made it as easy as possible for the users to access the Internet with as little effort and involvement as possible. Users who purchased this system for Windows or purchased computers that included the operating system needed only to click on the Explorer desktop icon and were online with little or no trouble. Mainstream users of both the late 90’s and today need the Internet for little more than email and basic information retrieval, and so were as much then as now satisfied with what Microsoft had to offer. Many library patrons use their library for little more than basic information retrieval- a need that can be easily met. It is essential to understand and deliver these needs, requiring as little effort as possible from the patron.
Elizabeth Castro notes that during the heyday of the browser wars:
Web designers wasted an incredible 25% of their time devising workarounds for proprietary tags, writing multiple versions of pages to satisfy each browser, and simply educating their clients about the impossibility of creating certain effects for all browsers. It was a mess. (16)
Led by Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) helped end this war by creating the Web Standards Project (WaSP) that standardized proprietary extensions and brought about a standard for markup languages for the Internet, (XML). The WaSP brought to attention that there was more at stake than just annoyed customers and frustrated programmers. According to WasP's mission statement, people with disabilities or special needs were suffering most because of the usability problems caused by competing browser’s efforts.
The playing field was somewhat leveled thanks to these web standards. Browsers such as those the open-source Mozilla Project had faithfully been improving since Mozilla’s creation in 1998 (the start of the open source movement) were coming back into the light.
The following information was taken from the Mozilla.org website:
Netscape Communications made two important announcements on January 23rd, 1998:
On March 31st, the first developer release of the source code to Communicator was made available.
The following is a list of definitions from Wikipedia:
July of 2004 saw the first drop in Microsoft's Internet Explorer market share from 95.73% to 94.73% (Hammersley). Michael Desmond calls the drop that continued downward to 92.9% in October "Internet Explorer backlash" (Desmond). Many users have begun to leave Internet Explorer for open source Mozilla because of security issues. Jason Krause explains that this is because “with 95% of the traffic, IE is a prime hacker target.” Krause also points out that by making the IE browser so connected to the entire Windows operating system, Microsoft has made is easier for hackers to gain access to the entire computer.
The Firefox browser by Mozilla demonstrates a product developed for the needs of the consumer. Features include easy information migration from other browsers such as Explorer, integration with the popular search engine Google, and pop-up blockers. It currently provides better safety and several newer features than Internet Explorer.
In response to arguments that the new Firefox and parent Mozilla will be stiff competition for Microsoft because it offers new features: "I don't agree that just because a (competing) product has a feature that we don't have, that feature is important," said Ben English, Microsoft's security and management product manager. "It is not. It is only important if it is a feature the customer wants. There are plenty of products out there with features we don't have. We have plenty of features that our customers don't use”(Kotadia).
An idea currently under works by both Microsoft and other organizations such as Mozilla is running applications within web browsers. Rather than purchasing and installing operating systems such as Windows from Microsoft, web-based applications could be accessed and run with much lighter browsers such as Firefox. This could be the future of the browser wars, as Ben Hammersly points out that technology could soon be available for web applications to replace desktop programs. He also points out that Microsoft has not updated the widely used Internet Explorer browser since 2001, possibly to prevent the widespread ability to run complex applications from it. Microsoft, to answer this new war and again dominate the market, may be attempting to abandon the browser altogether and keep their operating system as the only necessity for all applications. Web sites such as PCWorld.com and CNET News.com arguments are currently debated that desktop applications are more expensive to maintain and update, while web-based applications have many advantages, such as remote access and no need for installation.
An article by Shelley Phipps underlines the importance of customers in determining the future of research libraries. A parallel lesson can be drawn to the browser wars as customers certainly determined the outcome of success for Microsoft. Among other areas that require the application of new measures, Phipps suggests placing customer satisfaction as the top priority of the library. Both the Browser Wars and librarianship are also influenced by competitive influences such as private sector competition (Phipps). Libraries must provide information access satisfactorily to keep patrons from looking elsewhere for their needs
Customers remain loyal to products that make their daily activities easier, and this is what won the first browser war for Microsoft. People used Internet Explorer because it was convenient, pre-installed, and free. What could have made accessing the Internet easier for the users? The lesson remains the same as with libraries struggling to cope with advancing technologies and vast choices for the user. Above all, keep the users’ needs at the top priority.
Beckman, David and David Hirsch. “Be Free!” ABA Journal 90.11, Nov. 2004. p.64.
Bleicher, Paul. “Tech Trends Come of Age.” Applied Clinical Trials. Dec. 2004. Accessed 12 July 2005. www.actmagazine.com
Castro, Elizabeth. HTML for the World Wide Web. 5th ed. Peachpit Press: Berkley, 2003.
Desmond, Michael. “Browser Wars.” PC World. 15 Dec. 2004. Accessed 13 July 2005. www.pcworld.com
Hammersley, Ben. “The Second Browser War.” The Guardian Unlimited. 15 July 2004. Accessed 13 July 2005. www.guardian.co.uk
Kotadia, Munir. “Microsoft Says Firefox not a Threat to IE.” CNET News.com 14 Nov. 2004. Accessed 13 July 2005. news.com
Krause, Jason. “Internet Explorers.” ABA Journal 91.4, Apr. 2005.
Phipps, Shelley. “Beyond Measuring Service Quality: Learning from the Voices of the Customers, the Staff, the Process, and the Organization.” Library Trends. 49(4). 635-61. Spring 2001.
Rivera, Julio C. “Mosiac: An Educator’s Best Friend.” The Journal 22.3, Oct. 1994. p. 91-95.
Samborn, Hope V. “Serious about Surfing.” ABA Journal 87.6, Jun. 2001. p.74-80.
Sikorski, Robert. “Netscape’s Gecko and You.” Science 283.5409, 19 March 1999. p.1871-1872.
Webpage Design
Karen M. Boney
e-mail: karen.boney@usm.edu
Updated 7/31/2005