A web browser, or just
browser for short, is an app that retrieves pages
from websites and displays them on your computer,
tablet or phone.
Using a browser, you can navigate a web page by scrolling (or swiping); and
you can interact with the page, for example by filling in a form or by
clicking (or tapping) a link to another page.
Buttons in the browser’s toolbar make it easy to:
- Go back to the previous page you were
viewing.
- Go forward (to undo the going back).
- Refresh or reload
the current page to see the latest changes.
In modern browsers you can keep more than one page open at a time. For more
on this, see my guide to tabbed browsing.
Popular web browsers
The first browser was created along with the World Wide Web itself in 1990.
But the earliest browsers, like Mosaic (later called Netscape) and Internet
Explorer, no longer exist.
As of 2024, the market is dominated by Chrome, developed by Google. It
comes as standard with Android phones and Chromebook computers, and can be
installed on all other major platforms like macOS and Windows.
The core of Chrome is open source; and when
Microsoft phased out Internet Explorer, they replaced it with a browser
based on this core, called Edge. It comes as standard with Windows.
Apple makes its own browser, Safari, which comes with Mac, iPhone and
iPad. It can’t be used on other systems.
The final notable browser, Firefox, has a long history as a community
project. It’s typically associated with a vision of a fair and open
Internet; and the foundation behind it, Mozilla, publishes a manifesto of
such aims. Still, Mozilla is financially backed by a for-profit subsidiary,
which in fact receives most of its revenue from Google.
Search engines
Every page on the web can be accessed via its URL, but most of us can only
remember a few short URLs, like bbc.co.uk and moonpig.com. And much of the
time, we don’t actually know which site we want to visit. Instead, we want
to type a word or phrase and see a selection of relevant pages. This is the
job of the search engine.
People often confuse search engines and browsers. Perhaps this stems from
the fact that Google makes both the world’s most popular browser, Chrome,
and the famous search engine. The distinction is simple: a search engine is
a website; and as we’ve learned, you access a website using a browser.
This means you can use any combination of browser and search engine.
However, in recent years, the ability to search has become more integrated
into the browser itself: you can type words in the address bar – where
historically you could only type a URL – and get suggestions from a given
search engine without even visiting its website.
Consequently, many people stick with the default search engine associated
with their browser. In the case of Chrome, Firefox and Safari this means
Google, while Edge uses Microsoft’s own Bing search engine by default.
Historically popular search engines include Ask and Yahoo, while a more
recent alternative is DuckDuckGo. Other search engines dominate in the
Russian and Chinese markets.