Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, in 1990. He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser, which could display web pages on dumb terminals.
Google Chrome holds the largest global market share at approximately 69% as of February 2025. Safari is second at around 16%, followed by Edge at about 5%.
Mosaic was a web browser released in April 1993 and is credited as the first browser to achieve mainstream popularity. Its graphical user interface made the World Wide Web accessible to ordinary users and helped spark the internet boom of the 1990s.
Browsers use HTTPS encryption to protect data transfers between the user and web servers. Most also offer a private or non-logging browsing mode, cookie deletion tools, and varying levels of tracker and fingerprinting protection. A 2020 study found Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Firefox Focus offered stronger privacy protections than Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
Access to DRM-protected content from services like Netflix, Disney+, and Spotify requires a Content Decryption Module. As of 2020, the CDMs used by dominant browsers require providers to pay costly license fees, making it unfeasible for most independent open-source browsers to support DRM-restricted streaming.
Mobile devices surpassed desktop computers as the primary source of web traffic in late 2016. As of February 2025, mobile represents 62% of internet traffic, desktop accounts for 36%, and tablets make up 2%.