Sorry Microsoft after being loyal to your browser
strategy since 1995 when I was first confused by the Windows Operating
System on my Personal Computer now being inclusive of a browser called Internet
Explorer. Having used Internet Explorer for years and years I followed you to
use your Microsoft Edge browser over the last few years. It was your follow on browser
product to the legendary Internet Explorer although in truth it never was as
exciting to use. Whilst I accepted that one of the results of you losing out to
the Competition Market and Monopolies lawyers was that your Windows Operating System
had to offer the user an opportunity to install a browser of their choice not
one imposed by Microsoft. But I was always too lazy to make the effort and whilst
Internet Explorer and then Microsoft Edge sort of did the job of browsing the
internet for me I stayed loyal to using them. Internet Explorer had its development
frozen in 2016 with the development investment going into Microsoft Edge But
then I experienced Google Chrome with its sharp minimalistic interface and fast
speed as an internet browser along with its integration with other free Google
products. So it is Google Chrome from now on with me leaving the Microsoft browser
clique. Although Google offer office products I oddly enough always remain fully
committed to the Microsoft Office Products for my heavy lifting work.
World Wide Web
This made me reflect on how the browser had evolved
over the years. So I will cause you to yawn a bit as I delve into my past. My
career in a Software House ensured I remained at the leading edge of these
developments as they impacted our commercial business. The internet, world wide
web, browsers and networks both local and international were all a froth of constant
change. Start up after start up were trying to capture parts of this wild fire
of computer development. Bookshelves were full of new computer magazines riding
this crest of change with those like me trying to stay near the leading edge of
change. It was an impossible task.
It took a conservative techie called Tim
Berners-Lee to put together the bits and pieces to form the grand term a
systems architecture that he called the World Wide Web. He built it and came up
with much of the technical terminology that we are now so familiar with
covering files, protocols and connections. All the bits and pieces that glued
it together. Essentially a web page could be distributed from anywhere and have
its contents displayed on a computer screen. It was not dependant on any
commercially owned parts but sort of connected with everything. The start of
what later got termed open systems.
Now Tim was not flamboyant, he represented the world of science and not that of art and the humanities. So when he had to write a browser to display the textual contents that had been sourced from the world wide web he did it simply without frills and in line with the expectations of a techie. In fact at the time “green on black” screens with the flashing “>” prompts to enter some text was the order of the day.
NCSA Mosaic Web Browser
Legend has it that it may
never have moved forward had the potential not being spotted by two students,
Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, from the University of Illnois. They were given
time within their studies to design what became known as the NCSA Web Browser. The
NCSA was the National Center for Supercomputing Applications with their browser
named NCSA Mosaic. It included a protected browser frame that incorporated
windowing and decorating from the web pages it was interacting with on the
world wide web. It started to become an application. The artists had entered
the room. But initially their available browser artistic tools were very
limited although the impact of what they created was enormous. It has to be
said the most exciting additional feature was the addition of pictures with the
text flowing around them. It also included so called hooks to run what were
called helper application within the browser to display file types not covered
by the browsers base code which was HTML based. The tags within HTML represented
increased visual display functionality. The more tags used the more exciting
the final display for the user to experience. The NSCA Web Browser focussed
upon using as many tags as possible and certainly all the new ones being
incorporated in the newer releases of HTML. These policies kept it at the
leading edge.
Consider the NSCA Web Browser to be the core of a
browser upon which everything else you expect as a user whilst interacting with
the web is built upon it. Everybody looked to licence the use of this core. It
became the foundation stone of the principles of every web browser produced up
until this day. (2023). Although the core has significantly changed over time in
most cases it has been incremental progressive changes except for when Google dismantled
and rebuilt it in 2008 to create the very different Google Chrome.
Netscape Navigator
Marc Andreessen was first to spot the commercial
potential and to do something about it. He formed the Mosaic Communications
Corporation in April 1994 looking to capitalise on the World Wide Web. Although
originally thinking about gaming applications their first product was a browser
called Mosaic Netscape released in 1994. The browser was renamed Netscape
Navigator and the company was renamed Netscape. Just to confuse matters its
development had a secret internal project name of Mozilla which stood for it
being a “NCSA Mosiac killer”. There is nothing as competitive as the American
software industry based in California. Then at this time there was no one as
competitive as Bill Gates at Microsoft.
Microsoft took out a licence on the NCSA Mosiac
browser core and pumped enormous sums of money into its development and
integration into the Windows Operating System. Obviously Netscape soon realised
that this competition from Microsoft was breathing down its neck and without drastic
action they would be wiped out of the marketplace. So for them Netscape
Navigator 2.0 released in October 1995 was to be their saving grace. Firstly it
was made available on many computer operating systems including Windows 95, Apple
Macintosh, and the most popular flavours of UNIX. For example at the time
SunOS, Solaris, HP/UX and Linux, with Linux as an open system being
particularly significant. Linux is free to change and free to distribute
becoming a popular operating system in server farms where many thousands of
copies need to be run simultaneously to support the services being offered.
Importantly Netscape did not try to align its interface with the User Interface
standards being imposed by Microsoft or Apple. Importantly Apple also licenced the
NSCA Web Browser core developing it into the Apple Safari browser. Netscape
acted as a free agent looking to weave its way through the Microsoft and Apple
commercial empires so it could be especially innovative.
Netscape’s free hand with the development of Netscape Navigator 2.0
although keeping the HTML browser as a core processing activity it added fully
integrated internet email and newsreader modules. At the time in America subscribing
to and logging onto dedicated news servers provided by the news industry was a
common practice facilitated by the internet. This never caught on in the United
Kingdom.
So Netscape Navigator 2.0 looked to become the “go to” application in
respect of anything running on the internet. That is not just webpages. But
very significantly it introduced the concept of a “plug in” architecture whereby
every file type on the internet could be displayed for the user whilst conceptually
operating Netscape Navigator 2.0. So things like Adobe Acrobat and multi-media
formats like the Shockwave format (long redundant) could be handled as well as
the main core work around the webpage HTML. Then as if that was not enough Netscape
added in interpreters for two programming languages. Javascript a light weight
language to locally control the Web browsers windows and other control objects.
Then Java a heavy weight object orientated language allowing for the processing
power within the browser to be extended right across the internet. These would
lead to significant future developments of the browsers powers through
technologies like Ajax which uses asynchronous Javascript and XML to support advanced
data processing techniques within the browser. At the same time many new
techniques were applied to speed up the browsing user experience. For example
the use of cache and so called proxy servers. It also introduced bunched up or
parallel processing of multiple streams of HTML along with breaking windows up
into separately processed frames or parts of the window.
Reading the above I think you can
appreciate how ground breaking was the work of Netscape. In terms of browser redesign
nothing as significant was to happen until Google re-engineered the browser to
create Google Chrome in 2008. Unfortunately as so often is the case Microsoft
giving away their Internet Explorer free with their windows Operating System was
to destroy Netscape business model. You had to buy and pay for the Netscape browser whilst Microsoft give away Internet Explorer free with their Windows operating system. These
were the days before the industry realised advertising revenue could be the
core of a business model rather than selling any software.
Now I am not going to attempt to cover the development of Google Chrome but link you to a Wikipedia post on the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
It maybe worth just saying here that Google Chrome does hoover up all your personal information and internet usage. So when you use Google Chrome you need to be aware that Google shares your web activities with its partners. So they have access to every page you visit on the internet using it to target relevant advertisements from their agreed partners to you based upon this browser information. This does not worry me but should it concern you it’s possible to use private browsers that use Google Chrome browser open source code to create a version that does not extract this private information. Two are Brave (www.brave.com) and Vivaldi (https://Vivaldi.com). You will need to learn how to use these new browsers and personally I cannot believe its worth the hassle just to stop Google getting information about you.
Stop Press (08/03/23)
Source TLDR
Apple gets a cut of search revenue from Chrome as part of secret Google deal (2 minute read) Google is reportedly paying Apple a portion of the search revenue generated from Google Chrome on iOS. This agreement may be why Apple has not developed its own search engine or invested in its Safari browser to compete with Chrome. It is currently unknown how much Google is paying Apple as part of this arrangement. The arrangement is being investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK. This payment is in addition to the multi-billion dollar deal Apple already receives from Google for being the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. |
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