Browser Wars Flare Again, This Time for Phones and Tablets

But even if consumers are not so sure what Web browsers are (programs like Internet Explorer and Firefox), they have become a crucial business for tech companies like Google and Microsoft. That is because they are now the entry point not just to the Web but to everything stored online, like Web apps, documents and photos.

And as the cloud grows more integral, both for businesses and people, the browser companies are engaged in a new battle to win our allegiance that will affect how we use the Internet.

It’s an echo of the so-called browser wars of the 1990s, when Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator fought for dominance on the personal computer. This time, though, the struggle is shaping up to be over which company will control the mobile world — with browsers on smartphones and tablets. Entrenched businesses are at stake. Google’s browser-based business apps, for instance, threaten Microsoft’s desktop software, and mobile Web apps threaten Apple’s App Store.

“Twenty years ago, we didn’t know how the Internet was going to get used by people, and we for sure didn’t know about mobile or tablets,” said Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the first major browser, Netscape Navigator, and an investor in Rockmelt, a browser start-up. “Mobile is a whole new level of reinvention, so it feels like we’re in the most fertile time of invention since the early ’90s.”

Browsers give Web companies more control over how people use their products, and data about how people use the Web, which they can use to improve their products and inform advertisers. Faster browsing leads to more Web activity, which in turn leads to more revenue for Web companies — whether searching on Google or shopping on Amazon.com, which built a Kindle browser, Silk.

As Mr. Andreessen put it, “Why let something be between us and our users? Let’s have as much control of the user experience as we can have; make sure our services are wired in.”

Google’s Chrome browser, for example, makes Google searches faster and simpler because people can enter search queries directly into the address bar. And its apps — like Gmail, Drive for file storage and Docs for word processing — are all accessible through any browser.

“Chrome makes it much easier for you to search, browse the Web and use Drive, Docs and apps, and we are fortunate to be in a position where when people do those things, we do better,” said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome at Google. “Chrome is a platform, the underlying layer on which all our cloud operations run.”

Most people use either Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox or Apple’s Safari. In the biggest disruption to the market in 15 years, Chrome last spring toppled Internet Explorer as the most popular browser in the world, despite the fact that it does not come loaded on computers as Explorer and Safari do. It now has 36 percent of the global market, while Internet Explorer’s share has dived to 31 percent, according to StatCounter, which tracks browser market share.

A host of smaller companies, like Rockmelt and Opera, are also trying to grab market share, largely by focusing on mobile devices.

Browsers themselves are not lucrative businesses. Some, like Firefox, earn money from search engines like Google and Microsoft’s Bing that pay when people use the search bar built into the browser.

“No one is doing a browser to make money,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School who was co-author of a book about the first browser wars.

“Suddenly now, the browser has become the interface for the cloud more broadly, not just for traditional Web sites.”

In their search for dollars, browser companies are redesigning their products to follow consumers to mobile devices, social networks and cloud-based apps.

For example, new mobile browsers let people swipe through tabs with their fingers, automatically resize or zoom in on Web pages so they fit a phone’s screen and load pages faster than older mobile browsers. Some also sync with other devices, so things like most-visited Web sites, passwords and credit card numbers are available everywhere.

Nonetheless, browsing the Web on a mobile device is still inferior to using the desktop Web or smartphone apps. Apps, like those downloaded from Apple’s App Store and Google Play for Android devices, have more exciting features, are faster to load and are better optimized to small screens.

Bits Blog: A New iPad Browser Surfs the Web So You Don't Have To

What if your Internet browser showed you what it thought you wanted to see online, instead of waiting for you to direct it?

That is what Rockmelt’s new browser for the iPad does. The browser, which became available in the App Store Thursday, does not look like a browser at all. Instead, it is full of boxes showing you things you might like from around the Web.

“The Internet is vast,” said Eric Vishria, Rockmelt’s co-founder and chief executive. “We are trying to take the portion of the Internet that is interesting to you and pull it together.”

Rockmelt landed with a splash when it introduced its desktop browser in 2010, in large part because it was founded and financed by Netscape alumni who know a thing or two about browsers. They include Marc Andreessen, Netscape’s co-founder and a Rockmelt investor, and Tim Howes, a Netscape executive and Rockmelt’s co-founder.

Yet it has been slow to get traction. Four million people have downloaded it, the company says, and a few hundred thousand of them use it daily. That is tiny compared with usage of the biggest browsers — Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox. But still, Mr. Vishria said, active users seem to like it, keeping it open seven hours and 15 minutes a day.

The idea was that people need a browser for the social era, with updates from friends and social networks incorporated. The new iPad version goes a step further, filling the blank space in a typical browser with images, posts and articles from around the Web. Browsers should incorporate new visual interfaces on sites like Fab and Pinterest and new ways of communication on sites like Facebook and Twitter, Mr. Vishria said.

“If you think about how we all use the Web today, it’s radically different from 10 years ago,” he said. “But browsers are the same dumb window they were.”

People log in to Rockmelt’s new iPad browser with their Facebook credentials. Over time, Rockmelt learns what people are interested in based on what they click and share, to construct a stream of content, and users can manually add feeds as well. They can save tabs or pages to read later, and those tabs or pages are stored in the cloud for access from another device.

Though it sounds similar to other apps like Flipboard and Zite, Mr. Vishria said it was different because it tapped into the whole Internet and there was a search bar to travel elsewhere on the Web. Other companies, like Google, are also trying to fold social networking information into Web results and show people what it thinks they want before they ask for it.

Still, it is unclear that people want to slap together a browser, social media and their favorite sites. It can be distracting to see an avalanche of content every time you open a browser. And while some people do not even know what a browser is, they have an option to download one different from the one their computer or iPad came with.

That is one reason Rockmelt’s users so far are young people who have grown up online, Mr. Vishria said. Two-thirds are under 25 and 83 percent are under 35.

Slipstream: In Microsoft’s New Browser, the Privacy Light Is Already On

IT could usher in a new era of online privacy. Or it might bowdlerize the Internet as we know it.

Then again, it might do almost nothing at all.

The item in question is Microsoft’s latest version of its Internet Explorer browser, scheduled to be available to consumers in late October, packaged with Windows 8. The browser comes with an option called “do not track.” It lets users indicate whether they’d like to see ads tailored to them by companies that track their online browsing histories — or whether they’d rather not have their online activities tracked, recorded, analyzed and stored for marketing purposes.

Of course, browsers like Firefox from Mozilla, Safari from Apple and even an earlier version of Internet Explorer already offered this choice for people who expressed a preference. But Microsoft is going further — by making privacy a more public issue. The new Internet Explorer 10 comes with the don’t-track-me option automatically enabled, a fact that the software makes clear. During installation, a notice will appear giving users the choice to keep that preselected don’t-track-me preference as is, or switch it off on a customization menu.

It’s a radical move for a technology company, especially one like Microsoft, with an ad business of its own.

“No one says today, when a consumer first loads a product, ‘Hey, by the way, there are some privacy choices you may want to consider,’ ” says Alex Fowler, the global privacy and policy leader at Mozilla. He believes that this may be the first time that privacy features so prominently “in the first-run experience of a consumer software product.”

Right now, however, people who raise the do-not-track flag are making a mostly symbolic choice, having their browsers send out a preference signal. Web sites that receive the signal can honor it — or simply disregard it.

Over the last few years, as tailored ads have become more personal and persistent — often pursuing users around the Web with pitches for products they recently viewed but elected not to buy — many consumers have sought ways to navigate an advertising system that can seem too close for comfort. To increase people’s options, the Digital Advertising Alliance, an industry group, publicly introduced a self-regulatory program in 2010, and more recently an updated consumer site,

youradchoices.com. It explains how behavioral advertising works and gives consumers the choice to opt out of the practice by the group’s members.

But now major browsers are flexing their muscles with an alternate option, the do-not-track button, hoping to gain traction with consumers who want to manage their Internet experience on their own devices.

“There is vast consumer awareness and concern about privacy,” says Fatemeh Khatibloo, a senior analyst in customer intelligence at Forrester Research. “If a browser can differentiate itself by saying ‘we provide you better privacy tools,’ I think they’ll increase adoptions.”

But the specter of people opting out of tracking en masse presents a serious risk for marketers.

Consumer data, marketers say, is the fuel that powers the Internet, driving ads that support free content and e-mail services, search engines and social networks. If millions of consumers opted out of behavior-based advertising, industry representatives argue, many ad-sponsored sites could shut down or put up pay walls for people who elect not to see the ads. Internet Explorer 10 is only heightening their concerns. Because consumers tend not to change preset technology options, advertisers worry that the browser could shift millions of people to the do-not-track category.

“That would drastically skew the economic model underlying the Internet,” says Stuart Ingis, counsel to the Digital Advertising Alliance. “The choice is the Internet as we know it, or a much smaller, cannibalized Internet where you don’t have the diversity.”

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.

Bits Blog: Google and F.T.C. Set to Settle Browser Privacy Charge

7:17 p.m. | Updated SAN FRANCISCO — Google and the Federal Trade Commission are near a $22.5 million settlement agreement related to charges that Google bypassed privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser to show advertisements, according to a person briefed on the proposed settlement.

The $22.5 million fine would be the largest privacy-related settlement in F.T.C. history. It comes as the commission investigates Google for antitrust violations and cracks down on privacy missteps by tech companies, including Google, which last year agreed to pay for any future privacy blunders as part of a separate F.T.C. settlement.

A spokesman for the commission, Peter Kaplan, declined to comment. Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, also would not comment on the settlement, but said, “We do set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users.”

The case involves how Google shows users personalized Web ads based on their interests. Google’s DoubleClick ad network customizes ads based on sites that users have previously visited, and ads they have recommended to friends by using the Google +1 button. To do this, Google uses cookies, small files that allow Web sites to do things like identify the types of Web pages a user visits.

If you have visited travel Web sites or recommended ads for resorts, for instance, Google might show you vacation ads on the next Web site you visit.

Safari, unlike other browsers, blocks cookies from ad networks like Google’s. But because of a loophole, Google had been able to avoid the block, as researchers discovered in February. It installed cookies and tracked Safari users across the Web to show them personalized ads.

At the time, Google said this was unintentional and had resulted from a change in Safari of which Google was unaware. When the issue was brought to Google’s attention, the company said, it stopped using the cookies and showing personalized ads on Safari browsers. It also changed an out-of-date page in its help center that gave Safari users inaccurate information about ad-related cookies.

“We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers,” Google said in a statement Tuesday.

Google will not claim liability for the privacy violations, according to a person briefed on the settlement, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Google agreed to settle in part to avoid a court battle while it faces broader regulatory investigations by the F.T.C., the person said. The settlement is subject to approval by the agency’s commissioners.

Bits Blog: Google and F.T.C. Set to Settle Browser Privacy Charge

7:17 p.m. | Updated SAN FRANCISCO — Google and the Federal Trade Commission are near a $22.5 million settlement agreement related to charges that Google bypassed privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser to show advertisements, according to a person briefed on the proposed settlement.

The $22.5 million fine would be the largest privacy-related settlement in F.T.C. history. It comes as the commission investigates Google for antitrust violations and cracks down on privacy missteps by tech companies, including Google, which last year agreed to pay for any future privacy blunders as part of a separate F.T.C. settlement.

A spokesman for the commission, Peter Kaplan, declined to comment. Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, also would not comment on the settlement, but said, “We do set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users.”

The case involves how Google shows users personalized Web ads based on their interests. Google’s DoubleClick ad network customizes ads based on sites that users have previously visited, and ads they have recommended to friends by using the Google +1 button. To do this, Google uses cookies, small files that allow Web sites to do things like identify the types of Web pages a user visits.

If you have visited travel Web sites or recommended ads for resorts, for instance, Google might show you vacation ads on the next Web site you visit.

Safari, unlike other browsers, blocks cookies from ad networks like Google’s. But because of a loophole, Google had been able to avoid the block, as researchers discovered in February. It installed cookies and tracked Safari users across the Web to show them personalized ads.

At the time, Google said this was unintentional and had resulted from a change in Safari of which Google was unaware. When the issue was brought to Google’s attention, the company said, it stopped using the cookies and showing personalized ads on Safari browsers. It also changed an out-of-date page in its help center that gave Safari users inaccurate information about ad-related cookies.

“We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers,” Google said in a statement Tuesday.

Google will not claim liability for the privacy violations, according to a person briefed on the settlement, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Google agreed to settle in part to avoid a court battle while it faces broader regulatory investigations by the F.T.C., the person said. The settlement is subject to approval by the agency’s commissioners.