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I would venture to say 90% of the human populace does not think about what browser they are using on a daily basis.  If you are anything like me, you have Safari, Chrome and Firefox (all three) downloaded on your local machine and you really haven’t thought about it since the first day you opened your laptop.  You set one as your chosen daily and didn’t think about it again.  That’s totally fine!  But what if there is actually a browser out there that could not just do what it’s supposed to (i.e. give you access to the internet) but actually assist in your everyday life in a way that makes you 10x more efficient?  Technology tools should do just that.  But frankly, some buckets of technology innovation just don’t get that much love.  The internet browser is one of those spaces.  Let’s talk about it.  

A browser is a software application used to locate, retrieve and display content on the World Wide Web, including web pages, images, video and other files. As a client/server model, the browser is the client run on a computer that contacts the Web server and requests information. The Web server sends the information back to the Web browser which displays the results on the computer or other Internet-enabled device that supports a browser.

The components of a web browser are: 

1.  The User Interface:  Where the user interacts with the browser

2.  The Browser Engine:  The bridge between the user interface and the rendering machine

3.  The Rendering Engine:  Responsible for rendering the requested web page on the browser screen i.e. Trident, Gecko, Blink and Webkit

4.  Networking:  The component of the browser which retrieves the URL’s using common internet protocols of HTTP or FTP

5.  The JavaScript Interpreter:  The component that interprets and executes the javascript code embedded in the website

6.  The UI backend:  Used for drawing basic widgets like combo boxes and windows

7.  The Persistence/Storage:  A small database created on the local drive of the computer managing user data such as cache and cookies

Browsers are compiled to run on certain operating systems, without emulation, such as Windows, Mac0s, Linux, Android and Ios.

When pressed to name all available internet browsers available..could you?  I know I couldn’t.  The ones most people can name are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.  And, in fact, those are the most commonly used.  The browser market has been a competition for quite some time.

Note:  I am not going to get into every minute detail on the history of the web browser (that is what Wikipedia is for).  I am mainly going to focus on today’s key players and how they got there.  With a very brief intro.

First off, precursors to the web browser can be tracked down to as early as the mid 1980s with the emergence of hyperlinked applications.  Following this, the first actual web server called WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.  

The explosion in popularity of the Web was triggered in September 1993 by NCSA Mosaic, a graphical browser which eventually ran on several popular office and home computers. This was the first web browser aiming to bring multimedia content to non-technical users, and therefore included images and text on the same page, unlike previous browser designs.  Many others were soon developed, with Marc Andreessen's 1993 Mosaic (later Netscape), being particularly easy to use and install, and often credited with sparking the internet boom of the 1990s.  Netscape ultimately lost in a competition for dominance to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  But we will get there.

Until 1997, Apple's Macintosh computers shipped with the Netscape Navigator and Cyberdog web browsers only. Internet Explorer for Mac was later included as the default web browser for Mac OS 8.1 and later, as part of a five-year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. 

Launched in 1995, Internet Explorer became the most popular way to reach the web worldwide, peaking in 2003 at 95% market share, most likely due to this agreement and the boom of the Apple computer.  However, on January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed its own web browser, called Safari.  Then, Chrome launched in 2008.  It was first launched as a Windows-only beta app before making its way to Linux and macOS more than a year later in 2009. Chrome debuted at a time when developers and internet users were growing frustrated with Internet Explorer, and Firefox had been steadily building momentum.  

By 2010, Internet Explorer usage was in free fall, as Apple took customers from Microsoft, and competing browsers like Firefox and Chrome sped past the slower Explorer. Internet Explorer went from being a browser darling to total bust in a slow burn situation.  Ouch.  Founders- mark this in your memory.  Chrome now takes up 90% of market share.

It is worth backtracking for a minute to call specific attention to Mozilla, the cypherpunk dream.  The Mozilla project was created in 1998 with the release of the Netscape browser suite source code.  Mozilla is an open source community focused on enabling people to have a choice in how they experience the Internet.  Consistently, the Mozilla community has expanded the scope of the project’s original mission — instead of just working on Netscape’s next browser, people started creating a variety of browsers, development tools and a range of other projects. While market share has been slim, their mission is inspiring.

Firefox:  Firefox has long been the Swiss Army Knife of the internet.  Things people often like about Firefox include 1) it’s ability to alert you if your email address is included in a known data breach 2) how it blocks those annoying allow-notifications popups 3) how it blocks “fingerprinting” browser tracking.  It is endlessly customisable both in terms of its appearance and in the range of extensions and plugins you can use. Also, last year’s overhaul dramatically improved its performance, which was starting to lag behind the likes of Chrome, and it’s smooth and solid even on fairly modest hardware.

Chrome:  Chrome is ubiquitous.  It has a robust feature set, a full Google suite integration, excellent autofill features, an extensive extension ecosystem, great support for web developers and a solid set of mobile apps.  It is often considered the gold standard of web browsers.  Chrome also boasts some of the best mobile integrations available which is a big deal given the amount of time people spend on their phones these days.  Since Chrome is available on any major platform, it is easy to keep data in sync and browse between multiple devices.  If you sign in to your Google account on one device, all of your Chrome bookmarks, saved data and preferences come with you to your next device.  Also, it’s really safe.  Chrome will warn you if your email has been compromised and blocks lots of dangerous mixed content on otherwise secure connections.  Also, who doesn’t love dark mode?  I am using it right now..

Opera:  Opera shares a lot of Chrome’s DNA as both browsers are built on Google’s open-source Chromium engine.  As a result, they have a very similar user experience. Both feature a fast and light hybrid search bar.  The differences appear when you look at Opera’s built-in features. Where Chrome relies on an extension ecosystem to provide functionality users might want, Opera has a few more features baked right into the browser itself. It also introduced a predictive website preload ability, and an Instant Search feature isolates search results in their separate window while the current page fades into the background — letting users more easily focus on the research task at hand.  It also has some interesting ideas of its own such as Flow, which is designed for people who often spot things they want to come back to later: if you’re constantly emailing or messaging interesting links to yourself, Flow enables you to do that more elegantly by making it easy to share content from Opera on your phone to Opera on your computer.  You can pin sites to the sidebar, stick toolbars wherever suits and adjust pages’ fonts and color schemes; have a notes panel as well as the usual history and bookmarks bits; customize the way search works and give search engines nicknames; change how tabs work and get grouped and much, much more.

Vivaldi:  Vivaldi is the brainchild of former Opera developers, and like Opera it does things differently from the big-name browsers. In this case, very differently. Vivaldi is all about customization, and you can tweak pretty much everything from the way navigation works to how the user interface looks.  You’re intrigued- right?

Safari:  Safari is Apple’s proprietary browser and has served as the default option for accessing the web on all the company’s devices since its release in 2003.  Due to it’s domination over the Apple domain, it has a distinct lack of included features. The basics are there, of course, but that’s about it. The interface is also clunky, making the browser a bit of a pain to use. But it shows up where it counts.  Its performance is excellent, and it has a surprisingly clean track record on privacy.  

The Browser Company:  I want to highlight The Browser Company despite the fact that it has not launched yet because 1) it has gotten some funding hype and 2) I really like how they list their intentions on their website. 

“When we think about browsing the internet, we often ignore the browser itself. Instead, we think about all the things we do online—the articles we read, the emails we send, the shows we watch. The software that enables it all, the browser, is so ubiquitous that it’s ignored.

Despite the ways our internet use has evolved, the browser has remained relatively unchanged. While all of our other software tools are changing for the better—with more collaborative features, flexible interfaces, and powerful functionality—the browser largely still does what it did twenty-five years ago.

What’s more, we blame ourselves for the browser's shortcomings. When our browser has an overwhelming number of tabs, we call ourselves inefficient; when we get distracted online, we tell ourselves we need more discipline; when we can’t find a url, we think we're disorganized. Why does the browser get a free pass?

That’s why we're building a new browser—we believe it could do so much more to empower us. We’re imagining a browser that can think as quickly as we do, take work off of our plates, and pull our creativity forward. A browser equipped for the way we use the internet in 2020, and foundational for how we hope to use it in the future.”

I am excited to see what this is like in application.

Speed and privacy are two of the biggest considerations that will guide you when you're choosing a browser; some demand more of your system resources while others are relatively lightweight, and some offer full suites of security tools to protect your identity online, while others allow cookies and ads to run unhindered. 

The common features we run into time and time again with each of these browsers are bookmark management, download management, password management, history favorites, privacy mode, search engine toolbar and pop up blocking.  Those are expected but what happens outside of this lense?

Gaming is one of the major developments of the past ten years particularly due to GPU development increasing at an exponential rate.  Some browser companies have taken notice.  Twitch and Discord are built right into Opera GX, so you can keep an eye on your favorite channels and boards without having to keep them open in a browser tab. There’s also a dedicated section of the browser called GX Corner, which brings you breaking news from the gaming world, plus deals and links to free online games.

Despite the lack of traction in the virtual reality and augmented reality space with tech failures like Google Glass and Magic Leap, browser teams have still done the work to develop browsers to interact with virtual reality.  And I would say with good reason!  While the timing might not line up now, it is still very likely that eventually we will all be walking around looking at browsers and talking to one another at the same time.  Yes, I am bullish on Mojo Lense which deserves a whole dedicated post one of these days.  Anyway, Mozilla takes real strides to make its browser a truly modern way to surf from site to site, with Firefox Quantum, its virtual reality (VR)-based alternative Firefox Reality.  According to Mozilla, the purpose of Firefox Reality is to extend support for mixed reality and VR beyond the smartphones, tablets, and PCs that currently drive the technology, and to make it more accessible as the web continues to grow and advance. Similarly, Chrome also enables the WebXR API for AR and VR. 

Less futuristic than gaming integrated and VR browsers, the modern user just really doesn’t want to see ads.  They’re hard to get away from.  However, this has been the product differentiator for a few browsers out there.  Right from the start, Vivaldi blocks all web trackers and online ads, but you can tweak these settings and allow adverts on sites you want to support—like Popular Science, for example.

Likewise, Opera sets out its stall the moment you first run it: its splash screen enables you to turn on its built-in ad blocker.  Also a key differentiator in this new up and coming browser, Brave.

One of the reasons that there has not been a lot of competitive play in the browser space is that there really isn’t a tried and true business model here.  Web browsers are free products.  So by default, if a company were to disrupt this space they would need to have another simultaneous business strategy to bring in revenue.  Potentially owning ad space like Adroll?  Potentially monetizing plugs a la a owned Chrome plug in marketplace?  Or perhaps you can in fact charge for a browser.  Plain and simple if the product helps the consumer with their day to day lives that much, the $5/month model is palatable.  Or if not B2C, why not B2B?  Would enterprise companies pay a bundled SaaS style annual fee in order to give all of their employees a browser that was specific to their line of work, maybe even white labeled to their company entity?  The point is, there are multiple options.  But without having seen a proven outlier succeed it’s no wonder we have not seen many competitors come up.

With all this said, the real flag is that hardware companies ultimately own the market.  To gain traction as a browser company you either need to strike a deal with Apple and Dell or hope that your brand name carries equity in the general consumer world.  This, very obviously, is the biggest hurdle.

So while building a browser company is tough, given the reasons listed above, one of the most fascinating things to happen recently in the browser space is there have been multiple unicorn companies that have built their product on top of Google Chrome- Honey, Pocket and Grammarly.  

Honey, founded in 2012, is an e-com price-tracking tool that allows shoppers to get deals as they scour the web.  In January of this year, PayPal announced they would acquire Honey for a grand total of $4 billion dollars (their largest acquisition to date).  At the time of acquisition, they claimed 17M MAU.       

Pocket, founded in 2007, was actually backed by Google Ventures and originally called Read It Later.  It became a built-in feature on Mozilla in 2015 before being acquired by the non-profit in 2017.  At the time of their acquisition, Pocket claimed 10M MAU with over 3 billion pieces of content saved to date.  

Lastly, Grammarly, the extension allowing you to fix your grammar mistakes on various online platforms has yet to be acquired but does boast a $1B valuation given it’s most recent raise of $90M last year.  Grammarly started as a freemium tool and rolled out a premium offering last year.  It will be the first ‘unicorn’ to come out of the Ukraine!

The benefit of building on top of Google Chrome is the huge distribution opportunity.  Google has not published any numbers but we can deduce that there were roughly 2.94 billion Chrome users in 2019.  These are ready made users that do not require marketing acquisition costs.  Particularly if you can gamify the way your users hear about you outside the browser.  For example, Toucan, the language learning plugin allows you to learn a language in an integrated way by introducing you to new words as you go about your day to day.  They actually partner with businesses and people to sponsor words as well.  Not only is this a revenue stream but due to the playful nature these sponsors actually want to share this with their audience leading to a waterfall effect.  For example, Morning Brew sponsors the word “coffee”.

At the same time, Chrome reportedly is really supporting founders on their journey to develop.  Toucan founder, Taylor Nieman, exclaimed recently in a podcast with Joe Sweeney of Silicon Valley Bank that they actually dedicate resources and a team to help founders build on Chrome.  Understandably, this helps deepen the market commitment to their browser. 

As a founder, what do you think are the biggest market opportunities in the browser space?  Is it worth it to go up against Chrome or is the easier path to build on top of Chrome?  Interested in chatting about it?  Let me know :)

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