Browser Security News

This may sound like a counter-intuitive argument, since Microsoft is the current leader in the browser market (at least in terms of users). That said, in my view, the company is the underdog in this current browser war — just like it was once upon a time.

In the first browser war back in the early to mid-1990, Netscape got out to a massive lead and became the defacto standard early on. Microsoft’s early Internet Explorer versions, certainly up to at least IE 3, were pale shadows of Netscape.

Then Microsoft closed the gap and unleashed its monopolistic prowess to tie IE into the Windows operating system. The browser wars were on. Microsoft ultimately settled with Netscape’s new masters AOL for $750 million in 2003. War reparations?

Though it is impossible to provide an accurate global measure of what Microsoft’s IE’s market share is today, I think it’s safe to say it’s more than 50 percent of the market. Since its 1.0 release, Mozilla Firefox has helped to erode the 90 percent plus dominance that IE once enjoyed Microsoft Is The Underdog in Browser Wars 2.0