In the world of Web browsers, it’s beginning to look a lot like the 1990s, when the Internet was just starting to become an integral part of daily life and Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer vied for dominance. By the end of the decade, Microsoft emerged as the winner and Netscape faded into dotcom history.
This time around, the browser battle includes an increasing number of competitors, most notably Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome. But Apple’s Safari and newcomers like RockMelt, a start-up that promises to integrate Web browsing with social networking, are banking on innovative features to stand out in a sector in which users are reluctant to change.
Wharton experts attribute the new interest in part to cloud computing, which allows data to be hosted on remote servers and run on demand over the Internet; and mobile computing, which has put Internet-connected devices into everyone’s hands.
Meanwhile, some popular browser engines are now open source, meaning that anyone is free to use, change or enhance the software. For example, RockMelt, which began offering beta access on Nov. 8, uses the underpinnings of Chrome and integrates services such as Facebook and Twitter. A number of other browsers are based on Webkit, an open source project originally spearheaded by Apple.
Kendall Whitehouse, director of new media at Wharton, said open source has dramatically lowered the development costs involved with building a browser and “makes it much easier for a company to focus its development efforts on value-added services. [RockMelt] is a good example of open source components making innovation possible.”
Open source allows newcomers to enter the market without building technology from the ground up. Instead, players like RockMelt can focus on new features in search of the perfect browser.
“The ideal browser to me will be customizable, learn about my preferences over time, allow me to easily turn on and off social services and segment ‘friends’ for use in those services, and share my browsing history across multiple devices,” says Shawndra Hill, an operations and information management professor at Wharton. “The browser will most importantly help me to find the pages I am looking for on the web efficiently and effectively.”
Source:http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20101128/BUSINESS/11280330/1003/BUSINESS/More-companies-joining-battle-of-browsers
