In order to have a war, combatants must engage on a field of battle – somewhere. A browser war relatively quiet for a decade but almost as old as the World Wide Web, rekindled this week in Europe. Search engine giant Google joined a European Union antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and its Web browser, Internet Explorer.
In doing so, Google joins Mozilla, manufacturers of the Firefox browser, and Opera, the Norwegian browser that has been around since the Internet “Browser Wars” of the 1990s. Google last year unveiled its own browser, Chrome.
The lawsuit filed in January of 2009 asserts Microsoft illegally ties Internet Explorer to its Windows operating system in order to stifle competition. The alignment of three Web browser makers against Microsoft and Internet Explorer conjures images of the “Browser Wars” of the 1990s when Netscape and Internet Explorer vied for supremacy in the browser market.
In the mid 1990s Netscape was supreme among a host of browsers including Mosaic (Netscape’s parent), Tapestry, Cello, Opera, PCWeb, MacWeb and others.
Articles on the lawsuit have been published in: