IN the beginning – well in 1993, to be specific – there was Mosaic .And it was good, or at least good enough. By 1995, however, Mosaic’s time was on the wane, and Netscape was people’s browser of choice. Three years later, Internet Explorer had taken the lead – and seemed poised to hold it forever.
There were challengers, of course. By 2008, Firefox was making a run at winning over the Internet but managed to find only half the audience of Internet Explorer. That was the case until 2012, when they both were left in the dust by
Google’s Chrome.
Other competitors, like Safari, Opera ,and Edge (a rename of Internet Explorer), had a brief moment in the sun, but never came close to market dominance. Today,
Chrome is still firmly in charge, holding a 67% market share as of January 2025.
If history has taught us anything when it comes to web browsers, though, it’s that people’s allegiances to how they navigate the World Wide Web are far from absolute.
The oft-changing nature of web browser leadership was modelled visually by James Eagle, a content creator with a background in the financial services sector.
Emerging contenders
Change could be in the air once again. Artificial intelligence (AI) companies are starting to focus on the Web, which could herald yet another paradigm shift.
Recently, Ai-powered search engine Perplexity teased plans to launch its own web browser called Comet. In a post on X, the company said the browser was “coming soon” and invited people to sign up for a waitlist. It did not offer details on what would make the browser unique or offer any mockups or footage of Comet.
Perplexity has been growing fast, though. Last October, CEO Aravind Srinivas announced on X that the search engine was serving 100 million queries per week.
And in December, the company closed a Us$500mil (Rm2.2bil) funding round (with backers including Nvidia and Jeff Bezos), taking its valuation to Us$9bil (Rm40bil).
Perplexity isn’t the only AI company looking at the browser market. Last November, Openai was reported to be working on its own Ai-infused web browser.
That came roughly a month after the CHATGPT maker integrated web search into its popular chatbot, keeping users inside the app.
The CHATGPT web-search integration wasn’t perfect and, at the moment, falls short of the definition of a browser, but it was good enough to hook Inc. tech columnist Jason Aten, who wrote, “for most of the things I’ve searched for this past week, CHATGPT has been a superior experience”.
Google’s legal troubles
Google is hardly surrendering without a fight. Chrome is an important part of its business these days; however, it’s hard to determine exactly how much revenue the browser contributes, as Alphabet includes it in the same category as Android, Youtube, and search in its earnings reports. Google also uses
Chrome’s browsing history to help target ads.
Last September, Google very quietly added its Gemini AI into
Chrome, letting users access it by typing @gemini in the browser’s query bar before their chatbot question. It has since expanded the offerings, letting people create custom themes with AI, changing their search backgrounds, and doing a deeper dive into their search history. Soon, it says, users will be able to compare information across multiple tabs with an Ai-generated overview.
This could be an ideal time for startups to make a run at Google’s browser market dominance, as the company is busy dealing with other hurdles. Google is awaiting sentencing, expected by August, after it received a guilty verdict in a search monopoly suit. And the US Department of Justice has announced its hopes to break up the company, forcing Alphabet to sell Chrome. Even if that happens, though, it will likely be years before the appeals process runs its course.
A second case, meanwhile, regarding Alphabet’s advertising technology, is awaiting a verdict. And China has launched its own antitrust probe into Google, in response to tariffs. Both US cases, however, were brought by the Biden administration – and the Trump administration may be less enthusiastic about pursuing them. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai recently attended Trump’s inauguration.
Regardless of what happens in those legal battles, though, well-funded competitors have
Chrome in their sights. And the status quo in web surfing could be about to change once again.
By CHRIS MORRIS, Tribune news serv
