15 memorable development milestones of the web browser

15 years ago (October 13, 1994), the beta of Netscape Navigator was born, bringing the Internet into an era of multi-browser wars, long-standing lawsuits and countless software improvements .

The Unix browser was developed around 1991-1994, but the new Netscape Navigator is the first successful commercial browser that allows users to view text and images on the website.

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October 13, 1994: Mosaic Communications Company, later changed to Netscape Communications, introduced Mosaic Netscape 0.9 trial (later renamed Netscape Navigator).Version 1.0 appeared on December 15 as the first commercial browser to account for 90% market share before Microsoft entered the race.In 2000, their market share fell below 1%.

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April 30, 1995: Web traffic dominated the Internet six months after Netscape launched a browser.For example, web traffic accounts for 21% while data transferred via FTP protocol is 14% according to LivingInternet.com

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August 24, 1995: Microsoft releases Internet Explorer with Windows 95 operating system. With this smart move, after two years, Microsoft replaced Netscape to become the leading browser provider with 49% market share. (Netscape is 46%) according to data from Janco Associates

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January 1, 1997: The Opera Company (Norway) announces its first browser for Windows.Opera always has a small market share, about 1%, but the Opera Mini mobile version attracts more than 30 million users, including many BlackBerry users.

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February 23, 1998: Netscape created an open source project Mozilla Organization to provide a free browser.At that time, they had 28% market share and Microsoft dominated with 69%.In July 2003, Mozilla Organization changed into the Mozilla Foundation non-profit organization and became 2005 by Mozilla Corp.

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May 18, 1998: The US Justice Department conducts antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft, accusing it of abusing its authority to bring Internet Explorer to Windows.The person authorized to go to court by the Justice Department, lawyer David Boies (pictured), won.In 2001, the ministry asked Microsoft to share APIs (application programming interfaces) for other companies.

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November 24, 1998: AOL bought Netscape for $ 4.2 billion, but they could not help Navigator's browser regain lost market share.In December 2007, AOL announced that it did not support Netscape's web browser versions anymore.

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January 7, 2003: Apple enters the beta browser market of Safari and is integrated into the Mac OS operating system later that year.Safari also has a version for Windows XP and Vista as well as for iPhone.Its market share is less than 1% according to Janco Associates.

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February 9, 2004: Mozilla launches Firefox beta and is quickly considered a browser to replace Internet Explorer (accounting for 87% of the market).Firefox was soon popular and now has a market share of 19.2%.

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December 13, 2007: Opera sues the European Commission (headed by Neelie Kroes - photo) that Microsoft violated antitrust laws when selling Windows with Internet Explorer and not following web standards.The US software company is required to offer a menu of browsers for users to choose instead of defaulting to IE in Windows 7.

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January 14, 2008: For the first time, the list of the most popular and dangerous browser vulnerabilities is announced by SANS Institute.

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September 2, 2008: Open source browser Google Chrome for Windows was born.The version running on Linux and Mac also appeared 9 months later.Chrome is now up to version 3 and is rated for speed, neat interface and 3.7% market share.

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March 19, 2009: Before an improved series of Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome, Microsoft responded with version 8 of Internet Explorer.They claim this is the fastest, stable and safest IE browser to restore their position (their market share has dropped to only 68%).

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June 30, 2009: Mozilla introduces Firefox 3.5.This is not the fastest browser but contains many important improvements, especially for web developers

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August 13, 2009: Marc Andreessen, Netscape founder expressed his ambition for a new project: RockMelt - browser customized for social networks like Facebook.