A couple of years ago while I was browsing the magazine stand in one of my favorite stores, I came across a magazine with the question “Is the Web Browser Dead?” splashed all over its front page. For a minute I was in shock, how can the web browser dye? For me the death of the web browser meant the death of the internet, and that was something I did not want to contemplate. Not until I read the article and understood its implications, that I realized that the Web Browser was part of the internet, and that the success of the internet was independent of just the web browser, its success was reliant on many other factors.
The story of the Web Browser started in the mid 1990’s with Netscape Navigator, and the browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft a few years down the line. What ensued from that war was history, but it was the Web Browser that spearheaded the spread of the internet into our offices, schools, houses, and everywhere else raising people’s awareness and spreading internet usage like wild fire. The web was one of the major stepping stones that shaped what the internet is in its early days because it did not have a lot of competition. Think of it this way in the mid 1990’s how was the internet used? Most likely browsing the internet, reading emails, maybe chatting on IRC or MSN, and if you were a web developer you used FTP to transfer files back and forth to a server among other miner tasks that used their proprietary software. To make a long story short the web had a big chunk percentage wise of your internet usage time. Those days are long gone, so fast forward to today keeping in mind that we are not only using computers to access the internet but smart mobile devices and tablets as well, especially with the proliferation of such devices in lower income areas. What does that mean? It simply means that our internet habits have changed, and are continuously changing. Long gone are the days when the browser was the king of the internet, as an example many are the days that I have utilized the internet extensively playing games like World of Warcraft or reading news on my tablet without ever opening a browser. The browser is no longer just fighting with Email and IRC, today it has to contend with applications like Skype, Whatsapp, FTP, Spotify for music, bank application that give you your account balance online on the spot, applications that allow you to trade currencies and stock live, and applications that give you live airport landing and takeoff schedules. If that is not enough there are even applications that will give you direct access to Facebook, Twitter, CNN, The BBC, and the New York Times just naming a few, and by using them you are bypassing the browser all together to access that information. Honestly let me ask you this when was the last time you used the browser, and if you used it for how long did you use it for?
So is the Web Browser Dead? Personally I think not but its dominance has definitely dwindled in the past few years. Yes it is becoming easier to access information from the internet with alternative methods that are taking a chunk out of the browser time usage over the internet.
So why did I write this blog? It’s because I wanted to raise the user’s awareness and shine the spotlight on this issue, and to point out that we as humans take things for granted. Sometimes things change, our habits slowly change, and we don’t realize they have changed until someone looks us in the face and points it out to us.
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