Web browsers have gone through many stages in their evolution, but beyond their functions, features, and weaknesses, everything boils down to a single statistic: user adoption. In the last seven years, the entire planet began a transition that took it from the familiarity of Internet Explorer to the speed and flexibility of Google Chrome. This excellent animated map helps us visualize the most important changes.
The stagnation and the rise of Chrome
The web browser is one of the most personal choices a user makes on their computer. At the same time, the entire concept of the browser was one of the most affected by the stagnation caused by lack of competition. In other words, it took something like Firefox to discover how bad Internet Explorer was at the height of its dominance, and under that idea Google Chrome later manifested itself. Personally, I think that same stagnation is extending its tentacles again. Most parallel projects became clones of Chrome, or adopted the WebKit engine for "compatibility reasons", but the pattern remains intact: security and stability issues, entire gigabytes of memory devoured by magic, almost no interoperability, and superfluous features that don't interest the average user.
The animated map
Still, what brings us here today is not the future of browsers, but their past. The folks at Dadaviz created an animated time-lapse based on the adoption levels browsers recorded over the last seven years. Honestly, the chart speaks for itself: Internet Explorer was a kind of world conqueror in 2008, with several pockets of resistance controlled by Firefox. The first stable build of Google Chrome debuted in December of that same year, and from then on everything changed. Opera enjoyed a golden era between 2009 and 2010; however, in half a decade Chrome came to control almost all of the Americas, Europe, North Africa, and Russia. In 2015, the yellow wave would practically force us to talk about monopoly if we didn't know the finer numbers.
Trends and final thoughts
Two very interesting aspects are the unexpected resurgence of Safari in Greenland (2014), and the fact that in Japan they still prefer Internet Explorer. The notable advance of Google's services also serves as an elevator for Google Chrome, and the high levels of integration between the two are highly appreciated by a huge number of users. The chart doesn't seem to take Chromebooks into account (or at least, its creator hasn't confirmed it), but even with that apparent absence, the trend is undeniable: Google Chrome is offering something that the rest aren't. For the sake of the market, I hope developers pick up the gauntlet, understand what's wrong with their browsers today, and create more competitive alternatives.
Dadaviz
