Why the future of web browsers belongs to the biggest tech firms

Changes made to browser standards will make it harder for new companies to disrupt the status quo and cement the power of Google and Apple

Ten years ago, there were two web browsers that anyone cared about: Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Each browser vied for favour with web publishers, begging them to optimise their pages for one browser or the other. The browser with the most pages would, the browser companies thought, win the most users and thus the web, and so the first browser wars were fought to win over publishers.