It is an open secret: Web browsers have emerged to be the number one platform for applications that tie Internet activities into our daily life. From email over social networks to photo management, Web browsers are the centerpiece-software users want to use. From this viewpoint it is surprising how little innovation browsers have seen until just recently. First Google Chrome stirred a lot of media response, and now Safari has received an update that seems to follow on the path of Google’s Chrome.

Browsers and the social Web

Introducing major improvements on browsers is not an easy task these days. Look at Flock, which has been out since five years, but it never really took off. It is based on Mozilla, just like Firefox, but adds a couple of interesting social features. Flock integrates account management and easy connectivity to services like Flickr, Facebook and Delicious. Flock had its debut in 2004, and at its time it was a spark of hope, the browser with the most innovative approach.

Despite its high range of capabilities and availability for both, Windows and Mac OS, Flock never had a chance to establish a broad user base. I personally believe that the target audience of Flock was not focussed enough. There was a niche market for this kind of browser, But Flock attracted mostly geeks, like Merlin Mann, Chris Messina (who designed its interface) or myself. Maybe it was the developer’s team hope, that eventually, Flickr, Facebook and alike would get a grip in the mass market, and along with it, Flock would get a chance as a popular player. But the rise of social applications is a slow and ongoing process, and the new battle ahead of us might not even take place in browsers, but in mobile devices.

Apple’s claim of leadership

True to its core, Apple has always tried to be on the innovative side of software introductions. It is this kind of company that claims innovation as their DNA. Add style, a great sense for user experience and ignorance towards customers, and you got a good idea of what makes the Apple brand successful.

Initially, Apple had been quite successful with Safari. It’s market share climbed a little bit after its introduction to Windows, even though it’s unclear whether this market share was cut off on Internet Explorer or Firefox. The more likely scenario is the latter, because Internet Explorer users typically don’t care what kind of browser they are using, while Firefox users are the ones who likely try something new.

Chrome versus Safari 4.0

If you run Windows and gave Google’s new browser, Chrome, a test ride, you may feel familiar with a lot of “new features” introduced with Safari 4. Most prominently, the tabs are placed on top of the window bar, just like in Chrome. The behavior of dragging pages off and on from this tabs bar, say, to give a tab its own window, is also exactly the same like in Chrome. However, I’m not sure, but I think it was Apple who introduced this feature in Safari 3. before Chrome adopted it. The main difference is—and this is probably due to the limited capabilities of Mac OS today—that Chrome runs an actual application in itself for each individual tab. It is one container (the main window), but each tab is a process of its own.

Safari 4.0 doesn’t have such a feature, and it will likely never be able to run individual processes in each tab, unless Apple makes fundamental changes in its operating system. This may also explain why Google engeneers (not the dumbest on this planet) are having such a hard time adopting Google for Mac OS. You could easily create an application that looks and (to an extent) feels like Chrome on the Mac, but you cannot run it the same way like on Windows. Not, unless you figure something out to work around this particular limitation of the Mac OS.

Safari 4.0 tries to keep pace with the big players in the market, Firefox, who has shown true innovation in the past, and Chrome—but despite Apple’s effort to improve the user experience on Safari 4.0, it fails to deliver on the true innovation level. It’s a step forward, but some of the added features wouldn’t be missed if they weren’t there, and that is never a good thing for an application.