World Browser Day celebrates the art of engineering and code world wide. It also celebrates web connectivity and access to a world of information and content. Most importantly, World Browser Day celebrate browsers making the web a faster, safer and more personal space for everyone who can access it. 

It’s been 30 years since the World Wide Web was invented by Sir. Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, Switzerland. This technological development was the master key for the concept that we know today as the internet. We are proud of the fact that Håkon Wium Lie, Opera’s former CTO and someone deeply associated with the early days of Opera, invented Cascading Style Sheets, better known in the developers world as CSS. This made possible the separation of layouts, fonts and colors which enables website formatting on mobile devices.

At Opera, we have been part of the development of the web for more than 25 years. Back in 1995, our office was located at Waldemar Thranes gate 98. It was there, a year ago, that Håkon Wium Lie proposed the 16th of October as World Browser Day. This initiative came after the city of Oslo recognised our old home as a historical spot for the internet. It was there that Opera developed Presto, and TrollTech developed QT Tool (a.k.a. WebKit).

Billions of people use browsers every day

For more than 30 years, browsers have become a necessary part of our lives and the web. People install these software applications everyday in their desktop/laptop computers, smartphones and tablets. 

Today, there are more than 4.7 billion people using the web worldwide who use at least one of the five major browsers – Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox. While most of these browsers come pre-installed on laptops, PCs and smartphones, Opera remains the browser that 380 million people actively choose for its superior features and user experience.

We believe that a great browser comes with an amazing browsing experience which is all about making your browsing sessions faster, enhanced in privacy and security, and making the browser your personal space. We follow this philosophy by improving our ad-blockers, integrating a free, no-log browser VPN, and also by keeping you connected through the web with your loved ones by combining your browsing session with your favorite messenger services like Twitter and Instagram. 

In our gaming browser, Opera GX, we are giving gamers an immersive browsing experience with newly introduced background music. In addition, we connect a community of nearly 200,000 gamers everyday through our Discord channel. We are happy to see a place where gamers can interact with each other and share similar interests.

We are also celebrating that operating systems are improving your browsing experience in 2020. For instance, the new iOS 14 has finally allowed people to make other browsers default on Apple devices. If you are reading this on your iPhone or iPad, we suggest you check out this article.

On Android, we have introduced and updated more than 100 features in our Opera browser to provide you with enhanced security and privacy while connecting to public networks, and we have facilitated the synchronization of your personal data across devices. All these improvements come from the feedback we receive from you, and we do our best to attend to your browsing needs. 

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We are thrilled to celebrate World Browser Day for the second year in a row and we congratulate Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla and many web browsers companies for creating great applications that nearly five billion people use everyday in computers, tablet and mobile phones. 

We love to hear from you. In the comment section below, please share your memories. When did you start using browsers on your computers or mobile devices? What do you like the most about browsing? In what way has browsing become part of your everyday life? Feel free to share this blog post with anyone who loves technology and the internet. You can use the hashtag #WorldBrowserDay and tag us in your posts.

Happy browsing!

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