Twenty-five years of browsers: where we are now.

The browser is the most important software on most people's devices. It's also one of the few platforms where market share has shifted dramatically across decades — Netscape, then IE, then Firefox, then Chrome. Every shift has changed what the web could be. In 2025 the picture is clearer than it has been in years, and worth a proper look.

A quick history of the chair

• 011995-2002 — Netscape Navigator owns the market. Microsoft launches Internet Explorer in 1995, bundles it with Windows, and starts eating Netscape's lunch.
• 022003-2008 — Internet Explorer 6 is the dominant browser, at one point holding over 90% of the desktop market. Web standards stall.
• 032004-2010 — Mozilla Firefox emerges as the standards-based alternative. Peaks at around 30% of the desktop market by 2009.
• 042008-onwards — Google launches Chrome. Faster, simpler, with its own JS engine (V8). Within five years it overtakes everything else.
• 052015-2020 — Edge launches as Microsoft's replacement for IE. Initial version uses Microsoft's own engine; in 2020 Edge is rebuilt on top of Chromium.
• 062022 — Internet Explorer is officially retired. End of an era.

Where market share landed in 2025

The niche browsers that matter more than their numbers

• 01Brave — Chromium-based, privacy-first, built-in ad and tracker blocking by default. ~1% share but the audience is technical and influential.
• 02Arc — by The Browser Company. Spaces, sidebars, vertical tabs. Tiny share, outsized cultural footprint among designers.
• 03Vivaldi — Chromium-based, deeply customisable, beloved by power users.
• 04Opera — historic browser, now Chromium-based, with its own VPN, ad-blocker, and Opera GX 'gaming' variant. Strong in specific regions.
• 05Firefox Focus / DuckDuckGo Browser — privacy-focused mobile-first products that punch above their weight in consumer conversations.

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If you exclude Firefox and Safari, every browser worth mentioning is now built on Chromium. Google decides what web platform features land and when. Mozilla's WebKit independence on iOS and Gecko on desktop are the only real counterweights left.

The structural story under the numbers

If you exclude Firefox and Safari, every browser worth mentioning is now built on Chromium. That includes Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and Arc. Practically, this means Google decides what web platform features land and when. Mozilla's WebKit independence on iOS and Gecko on desktop are the only real counterweights left.

Apple's Safari is in an unusual position: it has small desktop share but it is the only allowed engine on iOS, which means every web developer on Earth has to test against it. Safari often lags on web platform features, and that lag is increasingly the bottleneck on what we can build for the open web.

What this means for builders

• 01Default test matrix: Chrome (Chromium), Safari (WebKit), Firefox (Gecko). One of each engine.
• 02Don't ignore the niche Chromium browsers — Brave's aggressive blocking and Arc's experimental UI surface real edge cases.
• 03Mobile Safari is where the next regression usually hides. Test iOS aggressively.
• 04Edge in enterprise context is its own profile — group policies and IT-mandated security layers change rendering behaviour.

Where it's going

• 01Chromium dominance keeps tightening unless regulators intervene meaningfully.
• 02Apple's grip on iOS browser engines is under regulatory pressure in the EU and elsewhere. Real third-party engines on iOS could change the mobile landscape.
• 03Privacy-first browsers will keep winning a steady trickle of users without ever taking double-digit share.
• 04The next genuine disruption is more likely from a category change (AI-native browsers, agentic browsing) than from market share shifts.

Browsers used to be a story about competition. In 2025 it's a story about consolidation, with a handful of small browsers carrying outsized weight in keeping the platform honest. Worth watching the next five years as closely as the last twenty-five.