After the entire fiasco with Microsoft’s bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system, to the exclusion of other browsing candidates, and lawsuits that followed – many people have gained a better idea of the numerous different options that they technically have available to them even if they choose the convenience of simply using the Operating System bundled browser. And this competition in the market has led to several innovations in how we view the internet today.
Though to many people, the internet is synonymous with Google (no, really) and their only contact with a computer is for very limited work related purposes, most other American consumers in urban communities have long since grasped the internet and ran with it. And in doing so, they’ve made personal choices about how they intended to utilize the internet based on individual judgment on reliability, security, convenience and features.

Though, at one point, Internet Explorer held a large sway over the market, as did AOL (when they used to send everybody their discs right at home for free month-long trials), that has long since changed with the advent of open source software alternatives. Instead of the typical choices, many users had switched to Mozilla Firefox for the initial superiorities it seemed to have over Internet Explorer in terms not only of speed and security, but the ability to distribute add-ons that improved niche functionality of the browsing experience. At that same time, the predecessor to Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, was running out of business and many of the later’s clients were redirected to the former.

Gaining global renown, Firefox did more for the variety of options now available than the individual companies that sprang with a plan themselves, in a way, as it showed users that there was another possibility. And today, because of this, we have browsers competing from several different companies, and with improvements by old giants, all of them are equally competitive for their particular clientele. The biggest names in internet browsing today are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari.