Tech - Clone Wars

There was a time when the each of the browsers had distinctive features and quirks. Internet Explorer soon started to dominate the browser market. Mozilla Firefox came in like a breath of fresh air with new features like tabbed browsing, spell check and so on. However, Internet Explorer was quick to match these features and maintained it's hold. Along the way, Opera also came into the fray. But, it didn't have much to challenge Explorer's dominance. Safari continues to be relegated to the "apple world".


The story started to change with a new entrant - Chromium aka known as Google Chrome (Chromium is the "open source" version). According to me it received a lukewarm response, even among geeks like me. I installed it and quickly shifted back to Firefox. I wish I could say the same now!

In the course of my work and home life, I use 3 different operating systems, don't ask me why! They are - Windows 7, Mac Leopard and Ubuntu. I have Chrome in all three of them! The 3 best things about Chrome are speed, speed, speed. Everything else is similar to Firefox (not surprised, apparently, it was built by Ex-Firefox developers)

To give some credit to the others, just as Chrome started looking all polished (pun intended), others are responding too.

If you see a quick comparison of all the browsers.
1. All of them have the minimalist UI as Chrome.
2. All of them support secure/private browsing, tabbed browsing etc.
3. All of them encourage extensions/add-ons. This way, a lot of the features of the browser are palmed off to other companies/developers.
4. All of them have sync features for bookmarks and other settings.

The browser wars, from here on renamed to clone wars are now interestingly poised. I am still rooting for Chrome as it continues to be faster than the rest.

Note: Just because I used Chrome, doesn't mean I typed this article any faster!

Update (10-May-2011): Private browsing first introduced by Internet Explorer and not Firefox as earlier written. Thanks for pointing out Vishnu.
Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India

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