Browser Wars: Mozilla vs. Safari vs. Internet Explorer

June 18, 2008
By

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

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New code and new features inevitably lead to bugs, and new code attracts attention. And the greater the public interest, the more interested the hackers will be in exploiting that code.

Having lived through the last browser war, I’m not all that enthusiastic about the idea of entering into a new one. While stagnation in the browser market hasn’t been good for Web users, it has to be understood that for Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple and Opera, the goal of a browser war is ultimately to increase market share.

Sure, we might see browsers improve all round (although the betas of IE8 still desperately need to improve), it’s browser share that all the players are interested in. And despite all its shortcomings, the Internet Explorer market share is going to be a truly tough nut to crack.

Internet Explorer is well entrenched and Microsoft isn’t going to let market share slip too far without a serious fight. So far we’ve only seen the small players with relatively small market shares getting involved in the browser war. Just wait until Microsoft gets involved.

What I’d like to see happen is not a war but co-operation. What would help Web browsers (the people, not the applications) would be to see a decent framework of standards evolve (beyond what we have nowadays with the W3C) and to see all the major players come together and start working to make surfing the Web better and safer for all.

Picture it, Microsoft at one end of the table, Apple at the other, Opera and Mozilla somewhere in the middle … but let’s be serious, that’s never going to happen.

Let’s just be glad about one thing, there’s no Netscape in the mix!