# Why Browsers Get Built

DevFeed: [Why Browsers Get Built](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/why-browsers-get-built-26542.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://infrequently.org/2024/03/why-browsers-get-built/>)

Author: Alex Russell

Published: 2024-03-10T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Alex Russell](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/alex-russell.md>)

Topics: [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/browsers.md>), [Web platform](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-platform.md>)

Tags: [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/browsers.md>), [competition](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/competition.md>), [platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform.md>), [strategy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/strategy.md>), [web-developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-developers.md>), [web-platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-platform.md>), [webdev](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/webdev.md>)

## AI overview

The article presents two-and-a-half reasons for building a browser and proposes ways to distinguish them. It argues that browser-building strategies differ by their relationship to operating systems, team composition, and whether the browser serves a broader web-platform strategy or another agenda.

## Source excerpt

There are only two-and-a-half reasons to build a browser, and they couldn't be more different in intent and outcome, even when they look superficially similar. Learning to tell the difference is helpful for browser project managers and engineers, but also working web developers who struggle to develop theories of change for affecting browser teams. Like Platform Adjacency Theory and The Core Web Platform Loop, this post started1 as a set of framing devices that I've been sketching on whiteboards for the best part of a decade. These lenses aren't perfect, but they provide starting points for thinking about the complex dynamics of browsers, OSes, "native" platforms, and the standards-based web platform. Contents Web As Platform Distinguishing Traits The OS Agenda Browsers as Bridges Browsers as Moats Tipping Points Distinguishing Traits Searchbox Pirates Distinguishing Traits Implications The reasons to build browsers are most easily distinguished by the OSes they support and the size and composition of their teams ("platform" vs. "product"). Even so, there are subtleties that throw casual observers for a loop. In industrial-scale engineering projects like browser construction, headcount is destiny, but it isn't the whole story. Web As Platform This is simultaneously the simplest and most vexing reason to build a browser. Under this logic, browsers are strategically important to a broader business, and investments in platforms are investments in their future competitiveness compared with other platforms, not just other browsers. But none of those investments come good until the project has massive scale. This strategy is exemplified by the ambitions of Netscape, crisply captured by Andreesen's quip that the goal was to render Windows "a poorly debugged set of device drivers". The idea is that the web is where the action is, and that the browser winning more user Jobs To Be Done follows from increasing the web platform's capability. This developer-enabling flywheel aim