Browsing internet was never same in all times. Internet was developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to share information on defense research between the connected universities and defense research facilities. At that time, it was just email and FTP sites with Usenet where scientists had Q&As. Later the idea took over the world and changed the way how people communicate to each other.

The fundamental requirement to surf the internet is a web browser. Do you know when & who made the first web browser? and how & when other web browsers jumped in to make internet surfing better? Let’s have a look back.





WorldWideWeb (1990)

World’s first web browser was called WorldWideWeb that was coded by Tim Berners-Lee. In 1990, it was the only way to see the web. Berners-Lee wrote WorldWideWeb on a NeXT Computer during the second half of 1990, while working for CERN. WorldWideWeb was written in Objective-C. It would browse http: space and news : and ftp: spaces and local file: space, but edit only in file: space as HTTP PUT was not implemented back then.

Mosaic (1992)

Mosaic was a major improvement in web clients that made web browsing more friendly with features like icons, bookmarks and more attractive interface. By 1994, Mosaic had a user base of several million users worldwide. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, Usenet, and Gopher.

Netscape (1993)

Marc Andreessen, the leader of Mosaic team at NCSA, soon started his own company named Netscape. Netscape released Netscape Navigator in 1994. Netscape Navigator became the most used web browser of its time and reached 90% of all web use at its peak.

Internet Explorer (1995)

Microsoft initiated the web browsers by launching Internet Explorer in 1995 (influenced by Mosaic). Internet Explorer was included with Windows that created tough completion for Mosiac. Microsoft was able to get biggest share on web browsers peaked at 95% by 2002.

Open Source Mozilla Project: Open Source Netscape Communicator 4.0 (1998)

Netscape started a project called open source Mozilla in Janurary 1998. Netscape made Netscape Communicator 4.0 Open Source in hope that it would become a popular open source project.

Opera (1996)

After working with Telenor, Opera released its own web browser in 1996. It was Opera version 2.0. Opera never achieved widespread use as a desktop web browser.

(Opera Version 5, I wasn’t able to find screenshot of version 2.0, if you know then please share in comments)

Apple Safari (2003)

Apple publically launched web browser for their operating system, Mac OS X, on June 2003 named Safari. Final version was included as the default browser in Mac OS X v10.3

Mozilla Firefox (2004)

Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross started an experimental project (Firefox) as a branch of Mozilla project. Firefox 1.0 was released in the end of 2004. Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Initially it was named Phoenix but later it was renamed due to trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies.

Google Chrome (2008)

Google Chome’s first Beta version was released on 2 September 2008 for Microsoft Windows. Google Chrome got famous because of it’s light and simple looks.