• The New York Times, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 9:15 AM

The browser wars are set for their next phase, reports The New York Times just a few days before the release of Firefox 3.0, the latest iteration of The Mozilla Foundation's popular Web browser. Firefox may be No.2, but it's still the underdog by a wide margin, as Microsoft still corners 75% of the browser market with Internet Explorer. Safari, Apple's Web browser that's built into its line of Macintosh computers as well as its iPhone handset, is third.

Experts say the winner of the next phase of the browser wars will be the one that innovates best. "The typical browser for today's consumer doesn't look all that different than it did 10 years ago," points out Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, which has invested in Flock, a browser start-up. "That is an unsustainable trend that is the launching point for the second browser war, which will not be won by monopolistic muscle but by innovation."

Microsoft handily won the first war by muscle, bundling Internet Explorer with Windows-based PCs. But Firefox, which users have to seek out and actively download, has done surprisingly well to grow its market share to 18%. Experts say that as tasks like email and word processing move from the PC to the Web, the browser may soon play a role similar to how the operating system manages today's PCs. "People in the industry foresee a time in which for many people, the only thing they'll need on a computer is a browser," said Mitch Kapor, a member of the Mozilla board. "The browser is just extraordinarily strategic."

Read the whole story at The New York Times »