What is a Browser?

What people said

michaelbuckbee · 2016-03 · Recommendation

It's old now (and I wonder how much it's changed) - but there is this great video of Google employees asking people in Times Square what the difference is between a browser and a search engine: [VIDEO] Most people conflate the two. IIRC the video was used internally as a tool to press the notion that they _had_ to build a browser or risk losing their search engine dominance.

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wturner · 2014-05 · Recommendation

Your strengths and weaknesses have curves, troughs, peaks and spaghetti complexity. Personally I completely accept that I'm pretty mediocre as a "developer", but honestly I don't really care because I don't personally consider myself a developer, I just look at myself as someone who simply likes to explore, learn and play with web based technologies. This way I don't get sucked into the pigeon hole psychology of the professional world. If someone else wants to look at me in that light that's fine , but I keep an invisible boundary between myself and that kind of thing. I also like to occasionally and inadvertently ask inane questions at stackoverflow which get down voted at machine gun intervals. It's good for the 'soul'. I have a mentor that has been programming since the 70's , I once lived in a place where an extremely smart Belgian software engineer was staying who helped me while programming, and I currently met a really smart engineer near where I live who has been gradually throwing me suggestions coupled with some pseudo mentorship. All of these people are very smart,very empathetic and willing to share. Being around people like that in my view is absolutely needed for your sanity. You've probably seen this video. It's the one where Google attempts to explain what a web browser is to random people on the street. Watch it if you haven't. It will lend perspective. [VIDEO] Ok that's all.

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lproven · 2025-07 · Reference

Good for you. I've been doing tech support since 1988. I've seen many many PCs with hundreds of apps, some maybe heading into thousands, sometimes with custom hackery to get different versions running in parallel and stuff. Yes this is a thing. It is common. And the typical user does not know what an "app" is, or what OS they are using. I've lost count of the number of people that told me their computer was running Word or Office (not Windows), or who think they access the Web via Google because they don't know what a web browser is. Here is some proof, in case you don't believe me. [VIDEO] If you can name the 20 apps you use the most often, you are the elite of the elite, the top 1% of 1% of computer users. Normal people are not like that. They don't know what they use or what it's called or what OS they run or what an "OS" is, and they outnumber us by approximately a million to one.

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