The Browser Monopoly

guest · Aug 22, 2019

The Browser Monopoly
Augsut 20, 2019
http://blairreeves.me/2019/08/20/the-browser-monopoly/

Rather, the tech monopoly that I wonder about is arguably one of the more mundane parts of the modern internet experience: your web browser, and its most likely source – Google.
Google Chrome has been the world’s top web browser since roughly late 2012, and has only grown in popularity since

Google is also the owner and developer of the free, open-source web browser Chromium, which is now the underlying code behind not only the Opera browser, but Edge, Microsoft’s successor to the much-maligned Internet Explorer. (As well as two dozen other browsers you probably don’t care about.)

That said, I’m always conscious that we are living on someone else’s standards. Sure, Chromium and the V8 engine are open-source, but they still belong to Google in a way that, say, TCP/IP or IMAP does not. As more and more of the software industry moves to SaaS, we are all dealing with this. This is why Microsoft’s decision to kill Internet Explorer, once the leading portal to the web, and replace it with a Chromium-based successor says so much about its new direction as a company.
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Distribution is dominance
There are only two meaningful alternatives to Google’s browser, and the reason why comes down to distribution.
Google can distribute products on the web better than any other single company.
Nothing that Microsoft could do would ever reach as many potential users, or drive adoption, at anywhere near the same scale, and they eventually came to understand this.

Besides Chrome and Chromium browsers, there are really only Safari and Firefox. [...]
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