A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on theWorld

Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video or other piece of [1] content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. Although browsers are primarily intended to use the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems. The major web browsers [2] are Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.

internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, and included in the OEM service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Internet Explorer is one of the most widely used web browsers, attaining a peak of about 95% usage [4] share during 2002 and 2003. Its usage share has since declined with the launch of Safari (2003), Firefox (2004), and Google Chrome (2008), each of which now has significant market share. Estimates for Internet Explorer's overall market share range from 27.4% to 54.13%, as of October 2012 (browser market share is notoriously difficult to calculate). Microsoft spent over US$100 million per [5] [6] year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on it by 1999. Since its first release, Microsoft has added features and

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating [2] systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3"Panther". Safari is also the native browser for iOS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system was first released on June 11, [3] [4] [5] 2007, and supported Windows XP Service Pack 2, or later but it has been discontinued. Safari 5.1.7, [6][7] released on May 9, 2012, is the last version available for Windows. According to Net Applications, Safari accounted for 62.17 percent of mobile web browsing traffic and 5.43 [8 percent of desktop traffic in October 2011, giving a combined market share of 8.72 percent.

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 300 million users [5][non-primary source needed] worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites and interpreting HTML, sending and receiving e-mailmessages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent, and reading web feeds. Opera is offered free of charge forpersonal computers and mobile phones.

Opera Mini, which is the third most popular mobile web browser as of March 2013, has been chosen as [7][8][9] the default integrated web browser in several mobile handsets by their respective manufacturers.

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Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser developed for Windows, OS X and Linux, with a mobile version for Android, byMozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web [13] standards. As of October 2012, Firefox has approximately 20% to 24% of worldwide usage share of web browsers, [14][15][16][17] making it the third most used web browser, according to different sources. According to Mozilla, [18] Firefox counts over 450 million users around the world. The browser has had particular success [19] [20][21] in Indonesia, Germany and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 65% and 47% of the market share, respectively.

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Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine until version 27 and, with the exception of its iOS releases, from version 28 and beyond the [9][10][11] WebKit fork Blink . It was released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008. As of April 2013, according to StatCounter, Google Chrome has a 39% worldwide usage share of web browsers making it the most widely used web browser [12] in the world. Net Applications, however, indicates that Chrome is only third when it comes to the size of [13] its user base, behind Internet Explorer andFirefox. In September 2008, Google released the majority of Chrome's source code as an open source project [14][15] called Chromium, on which Chrome releases are still based.

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