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Chrome is now the most popular browser across all devices, thanks to Android’s popularity and the rise of Chrome on Windows PCs and Mac computers. As Google continues to dominate our access to the web, information through its search engine, and services like Gmail or YouTube, Chrome is a powerful entry point in the company’s vast toolbox. While Google championed web standards that worked across many different browsers back in the early days of Chrome, more recently its own services often ignore standards and force people to use Chrome.
Chrome, in other words, is being used in the same way that Internet Explorer 6 was back in the day — with web developers primarily optimizing for Chrome and tweaking for rivals later. To understand how we even got to this stage, here’s a little (a lot) of browser history. If you want to know why saying "Chrome is the new Internet Explorer 6" is so damning, you have to know why IE6 was a damnable problem in the early ‘00s.
Here's a brief history:
Microsoft’s PC dominance with Windows peaked 16 years ago. Alongside Intel, Microsoft spent at least $1 billion promoting the release of Windows XP, with a TV commercial featuring Madonna’s Ray of Light. It was an era before the iPod, Gmail, or YouTube, and Microsoft didn’t even have competition from Google at the time. Microsoft acted like a company that could do what it wanted, and it pretty much did. After crushing its Netscape competition, the era of Internet Explorer 6 was born.
Internet Explorer 6 debuted with Windows XP, and was tied closely to many of its features. As XP grew in popularity, so did the web. IE6 arrived just as the “dot com” bubble was collapsing, and internet usage in the US was growing rapidly. For many, Internet Explorer was the primary way of accessing the internet, and the logo became synonymous with the internet. At its peak, Internet Explorer 6 dominated 90 percent of the entire browser market.
Microsoft controlled the way that millions of people accessed the web, and with Internet Explorer 6, it started to flex its muscles. As the web was becoming far more popular, standards were emerging that would help developers build sites and applications that would work across multiple devices and browsers. Internet Explorer 6 largely ignored web standards at the time, and set Microsoft and web developers on a path of painful decisions for years to come.
While Chrome has never managed to capture 90 percent of all desktop browsing market share, it’s now the dominant way people access the internet across devices. Netmarketshare, W3Counter, and StatCounter all place Chrome at around 60 percent of desktop browsing, with Safari, Firefox, IE, and Edge all far behind with up to 14 percent market share each (depending on who you trust). Either way, Chrome now has the type of dominance that Internet Explorer once did, and we’re starting to see Google’s own apps diverge from supporting web standards much in the same way Microsoft did a decade and a half ago.
Chrome, in other words, is being used in the same way that Internet Explorer 6 was back in the day — with web developers primarily optimizing for Chrome and tweaking for rivals later. To understand how we even got to this stage, here’s a little (a lot) of browser history. If you want to know why saying "Chrome is the new Internet Explorer 6" is so damning, you have to know why IE6 was a damnable problem in the early ‘00s.
Here's a brief history:
Microsoft’s PC dominance with Windows peaked 16 years ago. Alongside Intel, Microsoft spent at least $1 billion promoting the release of Windows XP, with a TV commercial featuring Madonna’s Ray of Light. It was an era before the iPod, Gmail, or YouTube, and Microsoft didn’t even have competition from Google at the time. Microsoft acted like a company that could do what it wanted, and it pretty much did. After crushing its Netscape competition, the era of Internet Explorer 6 was born.
Internet Explorer 6 debuted with Windows XP, and was tied closely to many of its features. As XP grew in popularity, so did the web. IE6 arrived just as the “dot com” bubble was collapsing, and internet usage in the US was growing rapidly. For many, Internet Explorer was the primary way of accessing the internet, and the logo became synonymous with the internet. At its peak, Internet Explorer 6 dominated 90 percent of the entire browser market.
Microsoft controlled the way that millions of people accessed the web, and with Internet Explorer 6, it started to flex its muscles. As the web was becoming far more popular, standards were emerging that would help developers build sites and applications that would work across multiple devices and browsers. Internet Explorer 6 largely ignored web standards at the time, and set Microsoft and web developers on a path of painful decisions for years to come.
While Chrome has never managed to capture 90 percent of all desktop browsing market share, it’s now the dominant way people access the internet across devices. Netmarketshare, W3Counter, and StatCounter all place Chrome at around 60 percent of desktop browsing, with Safari, Firefox, IE, and Edge all far behind with up to 14 percent market share each (depending on who you trust). Either way, Chrome now has the type of dominance that Internet Explorer once did, and we’re starting to see Google’s own apps diverge from supporting web standards much in the same way Microsoft did a decade and a half ago.
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