Progress pill
The browser: an OS within the OS

A brief history of browsers

Improve Your Personal Digital Security

A brief history of browsers

  • The birth and first browsers
  • From browser wars to the age of monopoly
  • Technological renewal: Mozilla Firefox and Safari
  • Market revolution: the arrival of Google Chrome
  • The evolution of rendering engines: from Trident to Blink
  • Blink dominates, Gecko struggles
The web browser is the software that allows you to access websites and content available on the World Wide Web. Its role is to interpret the languages used to create web pages, notably HTML, CSS and JavaScript, in order to display site content in a readable and interactive way. It acts as a Interface between the user and web servers, sending requests and receiving responses via the HTTP or HTTPS protocol.
But nowadays, the browser has become much more than just a piece of software: it's often the main interface in computing, especially for novice users. That is why it is sometimes considered as a "secondary operating system" within the actual operating system (which we studied in the first section of SCU202). Indeed, many tasks that used to be carried out using specialized local software are now performed directly online via the browser: entertainment, office work (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation), e-mail management, messaging, file storage and collaborative working.
Yet it has not always held this central role. The history of browsers is marked by cycles of innovation, technological competition, and sometimes monopolistic domination. Tracing this history will help us understand how browsers became so complex, and why their security is such an important issue today.
→ The browser is often mistakenly confused with the search engine. Yet the two are very different. The web browser is used to display websites, while the search engine (which can be accessed from the we browser) is used to find information online by indexing and classifying web pages.

The birth and first browsers

The history of web browsers begins with the birth of the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989-1990. It's a system for accessing pages containing text, images, videos or links via the Internet, using a web browser. To make this new system accessible, in autumn 1990 he developed the very first browser, called "WorldWideWeb", which laid the foundations for browsing as we know it today. It allows both viewing and creating web pages, including an integrated HTML editor. To avoid any confusion between the browser and the Web itself, its name was later changed to "Nexus".
In 1992, several other experimental browsers appeared. One of the most notable was Erwise, developed by four Finnish students for the Unix-based X Window System. It was the first browser to feature a graphical interface for this type of environment. Despite its technical merits, it suffered from a lack of funding and was not maintained after its first version. Other projects, such as ViolaWWW, also appeared during this period.
1992 also saw the creation of Lynx, the oldest web browser still maintained and in use today. It was developed by a team of students at the University of Kansas.
But it was in 1993 that the Web really entered a phase of rapid growth with the arrival of NCSA Mosaic. This browser was developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) in the USA. Mosaic is the first mainstream browser to seamlessly combine text and images in a single window. It can display images directly in web pages (GIF and XBM formats), representing an ergonomic breakthrough compared with text browsers such as Lynx. Mosaic also introduced support for forms, paving the way for true interactivity between the user and web servers. Mosaic was quickly ported to several operating systems (Windows, Mac, Unix), making it easy to distribute. Within a year, it became the standard tool for exploring the Web.
In 1994, Marc Andreessen left NCSA and founded Netscape Communications with Jim Clark. A large part of the team who had worked on Mosaic joined him. Shortly afterwards, the company launches Netscape browser, a browser based on Mosaic's foundations, but with better performance and technical improvements. In 1995, Netscape innovated by introducing the JavaScript language, developed by Brendan Eich, which enabled web pages to become dynamic, i.e. capable of reacting to user actions without reloading the page.
Thanks to its ease of use, cross-platform compatibility and speed, Netscape browser quickly established itself as the standard for the emerging Web. By 1995, it held up to 90% of market share, marking the beginning of the first era of web browsers. This massive success soon triggered Microsoft to react, leading to the browser war.

From browser wars to the age of monopoly

The meteoric success of Netscape browser in the mid-1990s was not lost on Microsoft, which quickly realized the strategic importance of the web browser in the future of computing. In August 1995, a few days after the release of Windows 95, Microsoft launched the first version of Internet Explorer, initially based on a commercial license of the Spyglass Mosaic source code (a different commercial version of Mosaic from the one developed at NCSA).
The first version of Internet Explorer was still rudimentary, but Microsoft began an aggressive development policy. In 1996, with Internet Explorer 3.0, Microsoft began integrating its browser directly into the Windows operating system, eliminating the need for users to download a third-party browser. This integration was strengthened with Internet Explorer 4.0 in 1997, which introduced a new proprietary rendering engine called Trident. This engine considerably improves page display speed and integrates deeply with Windows interface.
Microsoft's strategy is based on several technical and commercial levers:
  • native integration of Internet Explorer into Windows (preinstalled by default and uninstallable at the time);
  • a free browser, compared to Netscape, which remained commercial until then;
  • control of APIs and the operating system to favor their home browser in the Windows environment.
In the face of this competition, Netscape quickly lost ground. In less than three years, its market share dropped drastically. By the early 2000s, Internet Explorer held over 95% market share, making all other browsers almost marginal.
This virtual monopoly led to a major slowdown in innovation. With no serious competitor left, Microsoft allowed Internet Explorer's development to stagnate. Between IE6 (released in 2001 with Windows XP) and its subsequent version IE7 (in 2006), no major version were released, despite security vulnerabilities, CSS incompatibilities and non-compliance with W3C standards. This technological inertia held back Web modernization for several years, and forced developers to code specifically for Trident's bugs or erratic behavior.
Aware that it could no longer compete commercially, Netscape decided to release its source code to the community in 1998. This was the birth of the Mozilla project, which marked a turning point: the development of a free, standards-compliant browser, supported by an independent foundation.
The aim of this project is to completely rebuild the browser on new foundations, with a more modern rendering engine that will respect open Web standards. The aim was clear: to give back openness and interoperability to the Web, in the face of Internet Explorer's stranglehold. It was from this project that, a few years later, Mozilla Firefox was born.

Technological renewal: Mozilla Firefox and Safari

After several years of stagnation due to the virtual monopoly of Internet Explorer, the web entered a phase of technological renewal in the early 2000s. This turning point was initiated by two major players: Mozilla and Apple.
In 2002, the Mozilla project, born from the release of Netscape's source code, launched a new browser: Phoenix, quickly renamed Firebird, then finally Firefox in 2004 to avoid naming conflicts. Firefox was based on a completely new rendering engine, called Gecko, designed to be fast, extensible and, above all, faithful to the Web standards defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Unlike Trident, Gecko supports modern technologies such as CSS 2.1, DOM and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), along with enhanced security management.
Firefox also introduced several innovations that would have a lasting impact on web browsing:
  • a modular extension system, allowing users to easily add new features without touching the core of the browser;
  • tabbed browsing, popular among the general public, although already present in older browsers like Opera;
  • privacy tools such as pop-up blocking, an integrated password manager, and fine-tuning options for cookies and JavaScript.
Its light weight, flexibility and respect for standards quickly attracted advanced users, web developers and anyone seeking a more open alternative to Internet Explorer. By 2005, Firefox had surpassed 10% market share, a considerable achievement against a browser pre-installed on all Windows PCs.
Meanwhile, Apple was developing its own native browser for macOS. In January 2003, Safari was officially released. It is based on WebKit, an open source rendering engine derived from KHTML, originally developed by the KDE project for its Konqueror browser. WebKit is appreciated for its lightness, speed and ease of portability. Apple introduced numerous internal optimizations, notably for JavaScript processing, which was becoming a key issue with the rise of interactive web applications.
Safari became the default browser on all Macs starting with Mac OS X Panther (10.3), gradually replacing Internet Explorer for Mac, which Microsoft abandoned in 2005. WebKit will also be used later in many other browsers.
These initiatives revived technological competition, gradually weakening Internet Explorer's dominance, and paving the way for a new generation of browsers that are faster, more standards-compliant, and more focused on modularity, security and performance. Between 2006 and 2008, Internet Explorer slowly lost market share, while Firefox established itself as the main serious alternative. This context paved the way for the arrival of a new major player: Google Chrome.

Market revolution: the arrival of Google Chrome

On September 2, 2008, Google announced the release of its own web browser: Google Chrome. At the time, Firefox was making progress and Internet Explorer was still dominant, but increasingly criticized for being slow, unstable and lagging behind modern standards. Google, which relies heavily on the web for its services (search, Gmail, Maps...), wanted a browser better suited to the era of complex web applications.
Chrome was initially based on two technical pillars:
  • the WebKit rendering engine, inherited from Safari and KHTML, for displaying HTML/CSS;
  • a new JavaScript engine, called V8, written in C++ which compiles JavaScript code into machine instructions on the fly (JIT, for Just-In-Time), significantly boosting the performance of dynamic web applications.
But Chrome's real breakthrough comes from its multi-process architecture. Each tab runs in an isolated process, using a sandboxing technique that prevents a malicious page from compromising the entire browser. This isolation also improves stability: if one tab crashes, others remain functional. In addition to that is a minimalist, content-centric interface, with no menu bar, a combined address and search bar (Omnibox), and silent background updates.
Backed by Google's brand and a highly effective marketing campaign, Chrome rapidly gained market share. Its speed and ease of use won users over. In 2012, Chrome surpassed Internet Explorer in global market share for the first time.
In 2013, Google announced a major strategic change: it would fork WebKit to create a new independent rendering engine, named Blink. This Fork is explained by technical and organizational differences with Apple, notably around the engine's architecture and the integration of experimental features. Blink became the exclusive engine for Chrome from version 28 onwards, and was later adopted by many other browsers: Opera (which abandoned Presto in 2013), Vivaldi, Brave, Microsoft Edge (since 2020), and others.
As of 2025, Google Chrome holds around 66% of the global market across all devices(computers, smartphones, tablets), according to StatCounter data. It is followed distantly by Safari (mainly on iOS/macOS), Microsoft Edge, and Firefox, whose market share continues to decline. Chrome's dominance has also extended into the mobile ecosystem via Android WebView (a system component used by thousands of applications), which also relies on Blink.
Chrome has profoundly redefined the performance, security and ergonomic standards of modern browsers, while raising new challenges in the centralization and standardization of Web technologies.

The evolution of rendering engines: from Trident to Blink

The rendering engine is the core component of a web browser. Its main role is to interpret files received from a server (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts...) to generate an interactive graphical interface. The rendering engine is like an interpreter between web languages and your screen, translating lines of code into a visually coherent, interactive and functional page.
In concrete terms, when you enter a URL in the address bar:
  • The browser sends an HTTP request to the remote server;
  • The server responds with an HTML document;
  • The rendering engine analyzes this HTML, downloads the linked files (CSS, JavaScript, images...);
  • It builds a "DOM" (Document Object Model) that represents the structure of the document;
  • It applies CSS rules to calculate the presentation of each element (layout);
  • It renders graphics using the graphics card and windowing system.
This whole process needs to be fast and fluid to deliver a good user experience, even on complex pages. This is precisely the role of the rendering engine.
Here's a historical overview of the main rendering engines that have shaped the evolution of the Web:

Trident (1997 - 2015)

Developed by Microsoft for Internet Explorer 4, Trident is the engine that dominated the web in the early 2000s, at the heart of the browser wars. Although innovative in its early days, it quickly fell behind in terms of compliance with W3C standards, leading to the appearance of many sites optimized solely for Internet Explorer.
Trident also presented security problems and a slow JavaScript engine. Web developers often had to write specific code to work around its bugs. Microsoft replaced it in 2015 with EdgeHTML, a more modern engine that failed to reverse the trend. Trident remains symbolic of an era when an engine could impose its own rules on the Web.
Source : pcworld.com

Gecko (1998)

Designed by Netscape, then maintained by the Mozilla Foundation, Gecko powers the Firefox browser. From the outset, Gecko has been rigorous in its adherence to standards. It is written in C++ and supports numerous platforms.
Gecko has been the source of many innovations. However, its complex and historic code base makes certain evolutions slow.
In terms of market share, Gecko is now far behind Blink, since Firefox is the only major browser to use it. It is also marginally used by lesser-known and lesser-used browsers that are Firefox forks: Tor Browser, LibreWolf, Zen Browser, GNU IceCat, Waterfox... This makes Gecko a guarantor of diversity on the web, in the face of Blink's dominance.

KHTML (1998 - 2005)

Developed by the KDE project for its Konqueror browser, KHTML is a lightweight, modular and fast engine. Written in C++, it respects standards and offers a clean, well-documented base. It was this engine that Apple chose in 2001 to create WebKit. KHTML is thus the technical ancestor of Chrome and Safari.

WebKit (2003)

WebKit is a Fork of KHTML launched by Apple to develop its own browser: Safari. It was first optimized for performance and integration with macOS, then used by Google Chrome when it was released in 2008. WebKit is based on two subcomponents:
  • WebCore for HTML/CSS rendering ;
  • JavaScriptCore (also known as "Nitro") for JavaScript code execution.
WebKit stands out for its speed and small footprint. On iOS, Apple has imposed its use on all browsers for reasons of security and energy efficiency: even Firefox or Chrome on the iPhone use WebKit under the hood.

Blink (2013)

Blink is a Fork of WebKit initiated by Google to equip Chrome (and Chromium), then rapidly adopted by Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and even Microsoft Edge since 2020. Blink introduces more flexible governance than Apple's, enabling Google to rapidly experiment with new web APIs.
Today, Blink is the most widely used rendering engine in the world. However, this supremacy raises the question of a technical monoculture on the web, but we'll come back to that later.

EdgeHTML (2015 - 2020)

The successor to Trident, EdgeHTML has been designed by Microsoft to modernize Edge, with improved performance and compatibility. It incorporates some of Trident's code, but with a redesigned JavaScript engine. Despite these efforts, EdgeHTML struggled to convince users and web developers alike. In 2020, Microsoft decided to abandon EdgeHTML in favor of Blink, launching Edge Chromium, which became a Blink browser with a Microsoft interface layer.
The evolution of rendering engines reflects the history of the web: tensions between innovation and standardization, the domination of major players, attempts at more ethical or technical alternatives. Today, almost all browsers are based on Blink, with the notable exceptions of Firefox (Gecko) and Safari (WebKit).

Blink dominates, Gecko struggles

Since the creation of Blink in 2013 and its widespread adoption across all Chromium-based browsers, this rendering engine has become dominant. By 2025, it powers not only Google Chrome, but also Microsoft Edge (since 2020), Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and many other lesser-known browsers. Its dominance exceeds 80% market share on desktops, and especially on Android, where Chrome comes preinstalled.
This situation brings certain benefits: Blink is powerful and backed by major engineering teams (Google, but also Microsoft and others), and it evolves rapidly. Blink also contributes to a certain de facto standardization: web developers can target a single platform to reach almost all users. But this concentration also has serious structural drawbacks.
On the one hand, it marginalizes alternative engines, notably Gecko, used almost exclusively by Firefox. In 2025, Firefox will have less than 6% market share, which considerably limits its ability to make its voice heard in discussions on the evolution of web standards (W3C, WHATWG). Gecko is maintained by Mozilla, a nonprofit foundation with far fewer resources than Google. The engine remains competitive on certain technical aspects (notably privacy protection), but suffers from a lag in implementing certain modern APIs. And this phenomenon is part of a vicious circle: Gecko is less efficient, which leads to a drop in the number of users, which encourages developers to optimize their sites less for Gecko, so Gecko is less efficient... and so on.
On the other hand, this centralization around Blink means that Google de facto controls the pace of evolution and the technical priorities of the web. However, its commercial interests (advertising, behavioral tracking, proprietary formats, etc.) may conflict with the principles of neutrality, interoperability and privacy historically defended by players like Mozilla.
What's more, growing reliance on a single engine raises systemic risk to the web ecosystem. If Blink introduces a regression, a bias or a flaw, the impact affects all users. Technological diversity plays a resilience role here, just as it does in operating systems and software architectures.
Today, Mozilla continues to play an essential role in the defense of an open web, respectful of privacy and freely accessible. Firefox remains one of the few major browsers not based on Chromium, and offers independent innovations. But its survival depends on its ability to maintain a sufficient user base and sustainable funding.
Blink's dominance is therefore not just a technical matter: it involves political, economic and social stakes in web governance. In this respect, promoting multiple rendering engine remains a good practice in favor of a more neutral, safer and more resilient web.
In the space of thirty years, the web browser has evolved from a simple viewing tool to a complex software platform, integrated into the very heart of our daily computing experience. Understanding this historical evolution clarifies the strategic importance of the browser in today's issues of security and digital sovereignty.
In the next chapter, We will provide an overview of browsers currently available, from traditional to futuristic, comparing their advantages and disadvantages to help you make an informed choice.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
Which rendering engine is the most widespread today, and powers the majority of modern browsers?