Browser wars: 4-yr-old Chrome emerges as winner

New Delhi: The story of the battle of the browsers reads like an edge-of-the-seat thriller. The beginnings of the browser wars were murky with many shots taken below the belt. It was a David vs Goliath battle and Goliath, after an initial setback was winning. Netscape put up a brave fight, but could not withstand the might of the Microsoft Corporation.

Then in the second round came Mozilla Firefox, which was based on the Netscape code that was open-sourced. Firefox gave Internet Explorer a scare and emerged as the default browser for the savvier Internet users but it couldn't usurp the throne. Firefox, in spite of its many advantages over Internet Explorer, always remained a distant second.

But the Microsoft domination of the browser market could not last for ever. In September 2008 Google jumped into the browser ring with its Chrome Web browser and right from the onset it indicated that it was not in the race as an also ran.

According to StatCounter, in September 2008 Chrome's share of the browser market was 1.03 per cent, which rose to 3.69 per cent a year later, this further rose to 11.54 per cent in September 2010. In September 2011, Chrome's share of the browser market stood at 23.61 per cent. In November 2011 Chrome overtook Firefox to become the second most popular Web browser. In May this year, Google Chrome managed to end Microsoft Internet Explorer's long-standing domination of the market and became the most popular browser. In September 2012, that is four years after its initial beta launch for Windows users, Google Chrome commands 34.67 per cent of the Web browser market and and Internet Explorer stands at 31.52 per cent.

To promote Chrome, Google opted for traditional forms of advertising, something it had not done for its other products. There were full-page newspaper ads, outdoor hoardings and television spots to promote the new browser in town.

The graph of the rise of Google Chrome is almost symmetrical to the graph showing the fall of Internet Explorer.

The desktop battle won, Google is now going full steam ahead to capture the mobile browser market where the domination of its Android operating system is expected to make things for the Internet giant a little easier.