Synopsis
Your browser is free. So why is control of its defaults worth billions?
Court records put Google’s 2022 payments to Apple under a search distribution agreement at about $20 billion. Browser Wars follows the struggle behind that price tag: a thirty-year contest over the software that stands between us and the web.
From the first web browser at CERN to Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, Kang Ji-woo traces how technical choices became business advantages, how distribution beat invention, and how an open web came to depend on a handful of powerful gateways.
The story reaches beyond Silicon Valley. South Korea's long dependence on ActiveX reveals what happens when institutions build essential services around one browser. Apple's WebKit rules, search-default contracts, and antitrust battles show how difficult it can be to reopen a closed gate.
Now AI agents can click, book, and act inside our accounts. The next browser war is about more than which page appears first. It is about who gets permission to act on our behalf.
Explore:
Netscape's rise, Microsoft's distribution power, and Firefox's counterattack.
The differences between Chrome, Chromium, and the engines beneath them.
Cookies, encryption, browser sandboxes, and the browser hidden inside an app.
Default-search payments, platform restrictions, and the limits of antitrust remedies.
AI browsing, user consent, and the boundaries of delegated authority.
With historical photographs, explanatory diagrams, a timeline, and a glossary, Browser Wars connects the history of the web to a question every user faces: Who controls your gateway, and what are you willing to let it do?