Browser wars
瀏覽器之戰
Chrome rules the web
谷歌瀏覽器掌控網絡
What Google’s browser has in common with Queen Victoria
谷歌瀏覽器跟維多利亞女王的共同點是什么?
Aug 10th 2013 |From the print edition
EMPIRES rise and fall swiftly on the internet. Google’s Chrome browser, which celebrates its fifth birthday next month, has captured much of the territory of older browsers and is now responsible for about 43% of all the web traffic generated by the world’s desktop computers. When Chrome was launched the dominant browser was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), with a 68% share—it is now down to just 25%.
網絡帝國興敗迅速。谷歌的Chrome瀏覽器下個月就要慶祝誕生15周年了。它攻城拔寨,搶奪了舊瀏覽器不少的份額,現在擁有臺式機領域網站流量的43%之多。谷歌瀏覽器發布的時候,占據主導地位的瀏覽器是微軟的IE瀏覽器,當時臺式機市場占有率為68%,現在已經降到了25%。
It is only 20 years since Mosaic, the first browser capable of combining words and images in a single page, was made available. Some of its developers went on to launch Netscape, an improved version, in 1994, just as the internet was taking off. But Netscape’s dominance quickly crumbled after Microsoft started bundling IE with its Windows operating system. IE and Microsoft’s other software became so prevalent that in 2000 an American court briefly contemplated breaking the company into two.
從第一款能同時顯示文本和圖像的Mosaic瀏覽器誕生到現在也不過20年的時間。當年Mosaic的許多開發者繼續在1994年開發了改進版的網景瀏覽器。當時互聯網剛要大規模發展。但是網景的主導地位很快被微軟取代,因為微軟將IE瀏覽器與其系統綁定銷售。微軟包括IE在內的很多軟件風行一時,以至于2000年的時候,一家美國法院曾經考慮將微軟公司一分為二。
By 2010, when the European Commission forced Microsoft to start offering Windows users a choice of browsers, many were switching anyway, especially to Mozilla’s Firefox. Now Chrome is increasingly pushing Firefox to the margins. Measuring browser use is difficult and subjective: one source shows that IE is still in front in terms of numbers of visitors to websites. But for e-commerce, share of traffic matters more. By this measure Chrome now dominates much of the planet. Like the boast made of the British empire in Queen Victoria’s time, the sun never sets on its dominions.
2010年,歐盟執行委員會強制命令微軟為Windows使用者提供瀏覽器選項,很多用戶選擇了Mozilla公司的火狐瀏覽器。現在Chrome瀏覽器的崛起將火狐推到了邊緣。衡量一款瀏覽器的使用情況既困難又主觀。一個來源顯示按照訪問者訪問網站的數量算,IE仍然領先。但是對電子商務來說,信息流量份額才是最重要的。按照流量算的話,谷歌瀏覽器主導了全球的瀏覽器市場。就像維多利亞時期大英帝國引以為豪的景象:大英帝國的領土上太陽從不落山。