Credit: shoze.blogspot.com
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) enjoyed a long run as the king of the web browsers, a position it obtained mostly due to the fact that it has come installed with every version of Windows from Windows 98 onward (it was first released as a add-on for Windows 95).
The past decade, however, has seen some tremendous competition for IE from browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. This competition has fortunately resulted in some great innovation and choice for users. If you're using a Windows desktop of laptop, the following is a list of the most popular web browsers, in order of popularity*:
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Internet Explorer
- Mozilla Firefox
- Apple Safari
- Opera
All of these browsers are completely free to download, install, and use. They also have very similar base features. Why, then, should you consider using one browser over the other? In particular, why should you bother to install another browser at all when Internet Explorer already comes installed on your computer? There are a few reasons, and some of them are subjective. There's also a lot that could be said about each of these browsers but that would take quite some time. Instead, I'm going to talk about why I prefer and recommend Google Chrome.
First I'll throw a little curveball and talk about Firefox. I want to give Mozilla's browser some love because it really did a lot for the idea of alternative browsers. In Firefox's heyday, it popularized several key ideas that were completely absent from Internet Explorer, like tabbed browsing, extensions, and even the search box. IE eventually added all of these features in some way or another, but by the time they did, Firefox already had 33% of the market.
In 2008, Google decided to release their own web browser, Chrome. Between 2010 and 2013, Chrome soared to becoming the #1 web browser with 40% of web users opting for Google's application. Firefox has kept its share, so IE has really seen a decline recently.
There are several reasons Chrome has appealed to so many computer users. The first is the visual look. Much like the simplicity of Google home page its self, when Chrome is first installed, you're presented collection of five buttons and a bar to put text in. This bar is colloquially referred to as the "omnibox" because it can be used to enter URLs and web searches. This very basic idea simplifies web browsing. You just type whatever you want into that bar, and don't have to worry if you're typing in the right place.
Chrome is also designed with two things as a priority: speed and security. Google has gone to great lengths to make sure that the Chrome app is as fast as possible and that web content is delivered and rendered on your computer as quickly as it can be. Chrome also has many security features. It "sandboxes" your browser tabs, keeping malicious code in one tab from infecting or spying on another. Users are also warned when try to navigate to a site that Google has detected as containing malware. Lastly, Chrome updates its self automatically in the background without any user interaction, making sure that security holes are fixed the next time your browser is opened.
These are reasons enough for me to recommend Chrome to any Windows or Mac user. However, if you happen to use and Google products already, there are some other benefits to using Chrome. If you use GMail, for example, that means you already have a Google account. You can use this Google account to log into the browser its self. Doing this will synchronize your bookmarks and extensions, so if you log into Chrome on another computer, these things will automatically be synced there too. You can keep the exact same user experience on your home and work computers, for example. If you use the mobile Chrome browser on your Android phone or iPhone, your bookmarks will be synced there too.
As much as I prefer Chrome, I also recommend Firefox and Opera. They're excellent browsers with great features, and if you're not invested in the Google ecosystem (or even if you are), they're very good programs. My least favorite/recommended browsers are Internet Explorer and Safari. I'm just not a fan of those products, IE in particular. IE has always been a pain and always had a lot of issues. I think the following graph says it all:
* as of 2013, according to StatCounter