Vivaldi, Opera, Brave: should you switch your browser?

 There’s little doubt that, when the early 21st Century appears in the history books of the early 22nd century (assuming we make it that far), alongside the current climate crisis, mass access to the internet will be the defining characteristic of our time. At the beginning of 2019, there were around 4.4bn internet users, a sizable increase of 9% year-on-year. 

The mass availability of smartphones, tablets and affordable desk-and-laptops is a huge driver towards total internet adoption. In terms of the market for hardware, competition is stiff. Last year, Lenovo held the largest share (with 22.5%, then Hewlett Packard with 21.7%, Dell with 16.2%, Apple with 6.9% and so on) of the personal computer market.   

While the market for hardware has always been divided relatively equitably between tech companies, software is far more prone to near-monopolies. This is especially true regarding browsers: perhaps the most used and least thought-about bridge between the average internet user and everything from in-depth video essays on the use of chairs in cinema to the user manual for a T-34 Tank. 

In 1996, Netscape Navigator held an impressive 82.7% share of all browser users, a lead that was rapidly eroded by the rise of Internet Explorer (which overtook Netscape in 1998 and peaked at 95% in 2004) in turn relinquishing its crown to Google Chrome in As of August 2019, Google Chrome in 2012.