By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World
October 9, 2009

Web Browser Milestones

The Web browser turns 15 on Oct. 13, 2009 – a key milestone in the history of the Internet. That’s when the first commercial Web browser – eventually called Netscape Navigator – was released as beta code. While researchers including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications created Unix browsers between 1991 and 1994, Netscape Navigator made this small piece of desktop software a household name. By allowing average users to view text and images posted on Web sites, Netscape Navigator helped launch the Internet era along with multiple browser wars, government-led lawsuits and many software innovations. Here are 15 highlights in the history of the Web browser.

January 7, 2003

Apple enters the browser fray with Safari
Apple released a beta version of Safari, which would become its standard Web browser built into the Mac operating system later that year. In June 2007, Apple released a version of Safari for Windows XP and Vista systems. Safari also is the browser used in Apple’s iPhone. In June 2009, Apple released Safari 4 featuring speedier performance, enhanced integration with Windows and an at-a-glance view of a user’s favorite Web sites. More than 11 million copies of Safari 4 were downloaded in the first three days of availability, Apple said. A niche player, Safari has less than 1% market share, Janco Associates says.

February 9, 2004

Firefox released, gains mindshare with techies
The Mozilla Foundation released a beta version of Firefox – dubbed Firebox 0.8 – that would soon catch on as a speedy alternative to Internet Explorer. By 2004, Microsoft had more than 87% of the browser market, according to Janco Associates. But within six months of this release, Firefox was the preferred browser among techies, winning awards at Linuxworld Expo and being dubbed hot by Wired Magazine. Firefox grew in popularity, and today this free, open source browser has 19.2% market share.

December 13, 2007

Opera files antitrust complaints against Microsoft
Opera filed a complaint with the European Commission (headed by Neelie Kroes, shown here), claiming that Microsoft violates antitrust laws by integrating Internet Explorer into the Windows operating system and by failing to follow open Web standards. Microsoft has offered to provide its customers with a menu of available browsers to download rather than installing Internet Explorer by default in Windows 7. The EC says it hopes to settle the case before year’s end.

January 14, 2008

Web browsers top Internet vulnerability list
For the first time, Web browser attacks top the list of the Top 10 Cyber Security Menaces for 2008 compiled by SANS Institute. The infosec research group says malicious code placed on popular, trusted Web sites is exploiting components of Web browsers, such as Flash and QuickTime. These attacks are gaining in sophistication and becoming more common. In December 2008, Microsoft would announce a “ huge increase ” in Internet Explorer attacks, one of several times Microsoft must scramble to patch a browser vulnerability.

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World
October 9, 2009

Web Browser Milestones

The Web browser turns 15 on Oct. 13, 2009 – a key milestone in the history of the Internet. That’s when the first commercial Web browser – eventually called Netscape Navigator – was released as beta code. While researchers including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications created Unix browsers between 1991 and 1994, Netscape Navigator made this small piece of desktop software a household name. By allowing average users to view text and images posted on Web sites, Netscape Navigator helped launch the Internet era along with multiple browser wars, government-led lawsuits and many software innovations. Here are 15 highlights in the history of the Web browser.

January 1, 1997

Opera introduced, targets mobile devices
Based in Norway, Internet Opera Software released its first Web browser for Windows, dubbed Opera 2.1. Opera has been a minor player in the Web browser market since then; it currently has 1.1% of the market, according to Janco Associates. Version 10 was released on Sept. 1, 2009. Opera Software claims 40 million users on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. Its mobile version - Opera Mini - claims 30 million users, including many BlackBerry users.

February 23, 1998

Netscape creates open source Mozilla Project
Netscape created the Mozilla Organization as an open source developer that would provide a free version of its browser. By February 1998, Netscape – which had 28% browser market share – had been vanquished by Microsoft – which had 69% market share – in the first browser war. In July 2003, the Mozilla Organization would morph into the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit. In 2005, the for-profit Mozilla Corp.- was created and would eventually deliver the popular Firefox browser.

May 18, 1998

Feds sure Microsoft over bundled browser
The U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust case against Microsoft alleging that Microsoft abused monopoly power by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser into its Windows operating system. Working for DOJ, attorney David Boies (shown here) won the trial, and the verdict was upheld on appeal. DOJ reached a settlement with Microsoft in 2001, requiring Microsoft to share its APIs with other companies. Microsoft is required to meet this obligation until November 2009.

November 24, 1998

AOL buys Netscape
AOL announced plans to buy Netscape for $4.2 billion. The deal was a stock-for-stock transaction that ended up being worth more than $10 billion when it closed in March 1999. The merger required approval by the U.S. Department of Justice on antitrust grounds. AOL was not successful at helping Netscape regain market share for Navigator. In December 2007, AOL announced that it would no longer support Netscape Web browsers.

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World
October 9, 2009

Web Browser Milestones

The Web browser turns 15 on Oct. 13, 2009 – a key milestone in the history of the Internet. That’s when the first commercial Web browser – eventually called Netscape Navigator – was released as beta code. While researchers including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications created Unix browsers between 1991 and 1994, Netscape Navigator made this small piece of desktop software a household name. By allowing average users to view text and images posted on Web sites, Netscape Navigator helped launch the Internet era along with multiple browser wars, government-led lawsuits and many software innovations. Here are 15 highlights in the history of the Web browser.

October 13, 1994

First commercial browser released
Mosaic Communications Corp. – later renamed Netscape Communications Corp. – releases the beta version of its Web browser, called Mosaic Netscape 0.9. It was based on the Mosaic code developed by the NCSA, and Mosaic co-author Marc Andreessen was a co-founder of Netscape. The browser was later renamed Netscape Navigator. Version 1.0 was released on Dec. 15. Navigator was the first commercial Web browser to be wildly successful, rapidly achieving 90% market share before Microsoft entered the fray and took over the market. By 2000, Netscape’s market share would fall under 1%, Janco Associates says.

April 30, 1995

Web traffic dominates Internet
Six months after Netscape released its browser, Web traffic became the leading type of traffic on the Internet. For example, Web traffic accounted for 21% of the traffic on the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET backbone, while the No. 2 usage, File Transfer Protocol, traffic accounted for 14% of the traffic, according to livinginternet.com . This was a sign of the rapid adoption of Navigator, which saw 50 million copies distributed in its first two years, according to BusinessWeek.

August 24, 1995

Microsoft muscles into the browser market
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 1.0 in its Windows 95 Plus! Pack. Internet Explorer was built upon software licensed from Spyglass, an offshoot of NCSA that owned the technology behind the Mosaic browser. Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer into its operating system and provided it free of charge. Microsoft’s approach was smart; two years later Microsoft had replaced Netscape as the leading browser provider, with 49% of the market compared with 46% for Netscape, according to Janco Associates.

By Chris Brandrick
October 3, 2009

Google has come a long way in its eleven-year history, from its humble beginning as a Stanford University research project in 1998, to the global, multi-billion dollar online presence Google enjoys today.

Earlier this week, the company celebrated its 11th birthday and choose to mark the occasion with an all new Google Doodle, a fun take on their colorful identity. The unique logo illustrated Google’s eleven years in operation by adding an extra L to the company’s name to form a number eleven.

Google’s actual founding date is subject to debate. There are those who think that Google should bring out the cake on the September 4, the day in 1998 that Google filed its incorporation papers and officially became Google, Inc. Still others think that Google should recognize September 15, 1997 as its founding date, as that is when Google registered the google.com domain. But despite the debate, Google has celebrated its anniversary on September 27 for the past few years now, making the date somewhat official.

Any birthday offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past, so just what has Google been up to in the last eleven years?

Early Days: 1998
With 1997 behind them, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin dropped the original BackRub moniker in favor of Google, a play on the mathematical term “googol.” With the Google.com domain registered and a healthy $100,000 investment from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, the two Stanford students rented out a $1,700 a month garage space in California’s Menlo Park.

With a makeshift office in place, Google made it official and filed for incorporation as “Google Technology Inc” on September 4, 1998. As the rest of year played out, Google began to receive positive support in the press, and the company also hired their first employee, Craig Silverstein.

Money And Moving: 1999
Thanks to its growing workforce, the fledgling company moved twice in 1999. Google outgrew its modest garage and relocated briefly to a more suitable location in Palo Alto. In June, the company released its very first press release, detailing how the firm had secured $25 million of funding.

During the second half of the year, as the company reached forty employees, Google moved once again to offices in Mountain View, with an in-house chef included. This year also saw Google drop the exclamation mark from their logo and settling with its now world-famous branding.

Growth & Expansion: 2000
2000 was a year of growth, as along with the search engine reaching a milestone of one billion pages indexed, the website also expanded to support over fifteen languages including Chinese, French, German, Japanese and more.

How things change. This year (2000) also saw Yahoo! reveal that they will be using Google as their default search provider. At the time this was a big deal, as Yahoo! was once one of the darlings of search, which Google had originally set their eyes on to compete with; mission accomplished? Of course today paints a very different picture as now both Yahoo! and Microsoft are collectively attempting to compete with the search giant that Google has become.

Before the year was out Google also found time to launch the immensely successful AdWords program, and their Toolbar browser plug-in. With the year drawing to a close it was pretty clear that the search engine was on a meteoric rise, as Google was now handling nearly 100 million search queries a day.

Going Global: 2001
With the search engine now available in over twenty-five languages, it only seemed right that the company would expand on a global level with the opening of its first international office in Tokyo. 2001 also saw Google hire ex-Novell chief executive Eric Schmidt, who started at Google as the Chairman of the Board, before quickly moving on to become the CEO.

With the Google search index approaching three billion webpages, it seemed the perfect time to tackle a new type of search: Images. Google launched its Image Search service in July, and initially had an index of over 250 million images.

Getting Geeky: 2002
The year 2002 saw Google launch a range of new products, including the shopping tool Froogle, the experimental Google Labs, and the popular Google News service, a product of the company’s so-called “twenty percent time“. Geeky Google also decided to offer a Klingon translation of the site for all those Star Trek fans out there, bringing the total number of supports languages to over seventy. Spiderman, Warcraft 3 and pop star Shakira were amongst the most common search terms of the year.

The Written Word: 2003
2003 was one verbose year for the search-engine giant. It began in February when Google acquired Pyra Labs, creators of the Blogger service, which allowed the masses to publish their thoughts online with ease. Soon after the acquisition, Google’s company name was announced as a recognized verb, to “google it” had become synonymous with search, however Google strived to steer clear of dictonaries and protect their strong brand.

In December the controversial Google Print was launched: Now known as Google Book Search, the service allows users to view excerpts from thousands of books in digital form. Classic books and their film adaptations, such as Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter, were some of the most searched for terms on Google in 2003.

Email, Google Style: 2004
Without a doubt 2004 biggest Google news was the introduction of Gmail. The beta launched on April Fools Day, but Google made sure that Gmails was no joke, offering a then-unheard-of 1GB of storage along with a speedy user experience and the beauty of Google’s search technology built right in to your inbox. The service launched as a strictly invite-only affair, which resulted in an online gold rush of those hoping to land an invitation. After five years, Gmail finally disposed of its beta status early in June of 2009.

2004 also saw Google move to its Mountain View, California “Googleplex” headquarters, where the company still resides today. In addition, Google opened a research and development center in Tokyo and a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. With over three thousand employees, a range or products under its belt and over eight billion items in its search index Google’s growth continued to amaze.

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By Chris Brandrick
October 3, 2009

Mapping The World: 2005
In 2005, Google’s ongoing effort to organize the world’s information continued as they released Google Maps. Since then, Google has continually improved the mapping service, adding new features such as satellite views and directions, as well as increasing the number of new searchable locations. Google Earth, a 3D satellite photography-based mapping application, soon followed, further complimenting Google’s range of location services.

2005 also saw the release of the iGoogle customizable home page, Google Reader RSS feed manager and Google Analytics. Optimized mobile versions of Gmail, Blogger, and Search were also released.

Oh, and could you imagine naming your newborn baby “Google”? It happened.

A Message From Chad & Steve: 2006

Ending months of speculation, in late 2006 Google finally revealed that they had bought online video site YouTube in a massive $1.65 billion stock transaction.

The Growth Continues: 2007
The year started with Google expanding into new territories once again, with Google Maps making its way to Australia and the Google Docs suite of tools being made available in several additional languages. Gmail was also made available to all, no longer requiring an invitation.

The biggest innovation from Google in 2007 was the addition of street level photography to Google Maps. Dubbed Street View, the service lets you view and explore a number of US locations at street level. Naturally, Street View’s introduction caused some controversy as it raised quite a few privacy concerns.

Popular search terms in 2007 included the iPhone, Facebook and Second Life. Since Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the popular video site has grown into an outright juggernaut: Even the Queen of England has her own YouTube channel.

Going Full Circle: 2008
Last year Google celebrated their tenth year in operation, and showed no signs of slowing down. The company released its first iPhone application, expanded Street View’s coverage to include a number of additional countries, revealed a new version of its Picasa photo management app, and launched Knol, a Wikipedia-type service.

In its biggest move of the year, Google announced that it would enter the browser wars with its own take on the humble Web browser. The open source Google Chrome appeared in September of last year, and featured a minimalist interface and home page with shortcuts to frequently visited pages–features that have made their way into other browsers since then.

Later in the year, Google’s foray into software continued as the first ever cell phone to use Android, Google’s open-source mobile OS, hit the scene.

Google At Present: 2009

2009 has been a busy year so far for Google, and it isn’t over yet. So far Google has added offline access to Gmail, introduced its Latitude location service, taken you to Mars with a new version of Google Earth, and re-launched the GrandCentral phone service as Google Voice in the US, to name but a few things.

Google also unveiled its Wave service in May of this year. Wave combines a range of communication and social networking activities into a single web application and is expected to be available to the masses later this year.

The biggest news from Google this year came when the firm announced that it plans to release an operating system. Google Chrome OS is expected to land next year, and will initially be aimed at low end devices such as netbooks. Several hints at what the OS could look like have leaked online, but Google have yet to comment on any supposed screenshots.

A rumored screenshot of Google’s Chrome operating system.

What Does The Future Hold?
With eleven years behind them, Google is still innovating and tweaking. What we can expect next from the search giant is anyone’s guess, but in the immediate future we can look forward to taking Chrome OS for a spin, trying out new versions of Android, and watching countless videos on YouTube.

Just be sure to remember this, Google: Don’t be evil. Please.

The Firefox Web browser is fast approaching its billionth download and is likely to hit that milestone some time on Friday.

Mozilla has a Web site and a Twitter feed where people can keep track of the total. On Thursday afternoon, the feed showed more than 999,180,000 downloads, with about 15 more happening each second.

Mozilla said initially that it expected to hit the billion mark some time over the weekend. An hour later, as the news trickled out and the pace of downloads increased, Mozilla revised its estimate to Friday. An enthusiast Web site with a “Firefox Download Guesstimator” predicts it will reach a billion on Friday at noon GMT.

The figure includes all versions of Firefox since the first release in 2004. If a single user downloaded multiple copies for different computers, they are each counted in the total. And if a user goes to the Web site to download an update to an existing version, instead of waiting for the automatic download, that is counted as well. Automatic updates are not included in the total.

So the figure does not mean that 1 billion people are using Firefox. Still, it’s a significant achievement for a piece of software that was unknown to most of the world just a few years ago, and one that has had to compete with Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer, which ships free with every Windows PC.

Figures from earlier this month showed Firefox having just under a third of the global browser market, at 31%. Internet Explorer led the field with 60%, while Safari, Chrome and Opera each had less than 5%, according to Statcounter.

Firefox is stronger in Europe, where it has 40% of the market to IE’s 47%. In Asia, Firefox has 23% to IE’s 72%. In Antarctica, Statcounter says, the browsers are neck and neck.

Mozilla plans to launch a Web site Monday, at www.onebillionplusyou.com, where it will provide more information on the achievement.

The big news is Google’s Chrome OS: a Linux-based operating system designed specifically for getting to the Web and Web apps faster. If that sounds familiar, that’s because Google’s Web browser, Chrome, was built around the same idea of rendering Web pages and Web applications faster and better than traditional browsers. Those claims have since been put to the test, and the results for Chrome have so far been mixed.

So will Google Chrome OS be any better? Is it going to be a useful alternative or just another way for Google to pull more people into Google’s suite of online products like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader?

There are still a lot of questions out there about this new OS, but here are the top five questions on my mind.

Is Google Chrome OS really practical for anything more powerful than a Mobile Internet Device (MID)?
When I first read Google’s announcement for Chrome OS, two products immediately came to mind: Crunchpad and the rumored Apple tablet. To be honest, MIDs are the only plausible reason I can see for wanting to use this OS. Google says Chrome OS is designed “to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the Web in a few seconds.” The company also says that for applications “the Web is the platform” not the OS. In other words, this OS isn’t for running Microsoft Word or other desktop apps.

That’s a problem, in my view. Sure, Google Docs is a great application for typing up a basic document, but it is far from the powerful tool that Microsoft Word is. So while Google says this OS is ideal for netbooks, I don’t see why you would want to handicap yourself by using a less-functional OS on a piece of hardware — like a netbook — that has a nearly full-sized keyboard and a good processor. Google also says the OS can be used on desktops, which could be ideal for a public Internet terminal, but for the home user? Forget it. The only plausible use I can see for Chrome OS on your home computer would be under a dual-boot scenario to get on the Web quickly without waiting for Windows or OS X to start up. That’s a similar scenario another cloud operating system, Good OS, was also envisioned for.

Will Chrome OS keep Microsoft up at night?
Don’t make me laugh. Chrome OS is about as much a threat to Microsoft as a mosquito is to a bear — assuming the mosquito doesn’t have Malaria, that is. It’s hard to envision Chrome OS significantly impacting a full-featured OS like Windows. Microsoft and Google aren’t even on the same page when it comes to defining a cloud OS, so they’re unlikely to compete in that arena either.

Microsoft’s cloud OS, Azure, is a “scalable hosting environment on which developers can build and host their applications.” In other words, Azure runs on servers, not home PCs, and is a tool for businesses that want to build Web applications and services. Google, on the other hand, is advocating Chrome OS as a solution for the home computer.

Google says virus free. Really?
Here we go again with another company building the mythological virus-free operating system. The fact, is you just can’t build an operating system that is fully immune to malware and viruses. Yeah, yeah, I know — you’ve owned a Mac for the last ten years and have never had one virus, but when you owned a Windows machine it was always down for maintenance.

We’ve all heard that story, and we all know about the Mac vs. PC security argument. Believe it or not, Mac viruses are out there; it’s just that Mac malware is so scarce that it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever come across one, but a Mac is far from being perfectly secure. Don’t forget that Safari running on a Mac was the first Web browser to go down at this year’s PWN2OWN competition at CanSecWest. The truth is a computer’s security is primarily dependent on a security conscious operator (you) and a hacker’s reluctance to discover security compromises for that machine.

The same principle will apply to the Chrome OS. It’s highly unlikely we’ll see viruses for the new OS since it will start out as a such a niche product anyway. However, if Google’s new operating system somehow gains widespread appeal, you can bet on seeing viruses and other malware tailor made for Chrome OS.

Will Chrome OS-powered devices be cheaper?
If Android is any guide, I’m not sure we’ll see Chrome OS devices being that much cheaper. I can imagine we’ll see netbooks and MIDs with 3G or 4G capability, making it a perfect fit for carriers looking to branch out beyond cell phones. So you’re likely to find subsidized Chrome OS devices that are, in fact, cheaper.

But if you buy a device straight out, how much cheaper will it be compared to a Windows machine? Google will probably make Chrome OS available to hardware makers in a similar method to its Android platform for mobile phones, which means it will be free with some subtle restrictions based on the licensing agreement between Google and the manufacturer.

But if Android is free, how do you explain the fact that Android devices have such high full retail prices?

It may not be entirely fair to judge the cost of Chrome OS based on Android prices, but I’m just saying there’s no guarantee that Google-powered devices will be cheaper than their Windows counterparts.

Will you be able to download Chrome OS like you would any other Linux build?
Common sense says yes, but notice that Google didn’t mention anything in its announcement about downloading Chrome OS straight from its site. Google’s blog post focused primarily on making Chrome OS available through third-party manufacturers. I’ll take a pass on this one until Google makes its intentions clearer.

Chrome OS must search for a niche
Google’s announcement is very interesting, and Chrome OS is another indication that Internet-focused devices are becoming more important to hardware and software developers. That being said, I’m still not convinced the world is ready to jettison their desktop-centric computers and reach for the clouds. I guess we’ll know for sure when the first Chrome OS devices hit the market in the second half of 2010.