Indian web browsers have a long way to go | Photo credit: Wach Irit
Last year, the Government announced the development challenge of the Indian Web browser and invited Indian entities to develop an indigenous web browser. The results were announced recently, and ULAA, a browser developed by Zoho Corp, won the Superior Prize, surpassing 57 innings.
Coronar a browser is the first easy step. The difficult scale on scale is to obtain a wide acceptance of propagation in a market dominated by browsers of large -technology companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft. Can India’s browser fulfill competition at home, even before assuming competition outside India?
The Indian browse market is dominated by Chrome (89 percent), while Safari, Firefox and Edge Together represent 8 percent. This unequal domain arises from its strong presence in the PC and the space of the mobile operating system (OS). Google Bundle Chrome with its Android operating system, Apple Bundles Safari with Macos and Microsoft Bundles Edge with Windows. To interrupt this market balance without a popular operating system in Tow, ULAA or any other indigenous browser would require much more firepower than only the label made in India.
In essence, ULAA is not designed from scratch, but is based on Chromium, an open source version or Google Chrome browser. He thought that ULAA’s central strengths are privacy and data protection, and allows several compartment navigation modes, these characteristics alone do not make it exclusively Indian.
Indian languages push
India needs browsers who can close their diversity by first adopting Indian languages. They must offer translations of the website in the fly and allow the text without translation problems from one language to another. Although popular browsers allow some automated translation, the user experience is far from being without problems.
Achieving this will be a long journey and request a significant investment in research in artificial intelligence and automatic translation technologies. The mission of AI of India must also work with the academy and industry to focus on this goal as well.
This goal will help not only browsers, but another software made for India. For Indian browsers to compete, the key is to incorporate location characteristics that address the diversity of India. ULAA is not the first browser that is made in India. The previous ones, Epic (launched in 2010) and Veera (launched in 2023), have not yet challenged dominant players such as Chrome, since they lack specific linguistic tools kits of India and characteristics. Unlike Epic and Veera, ULAA is in a better position to challenge leaders, since it is backed by the Great Zoho Software Corporation as a service.
Sailing a new browser is a good start. Updating it as innumerable operating systems evolve will require technical delicacy and financial muscle. Navigators obtain income through advertisements, routing consultations to specific search engines or cross subsidy from other sources of income. It is not clear how Zoho will maintain long -term commercial viability. Enterprise Editions can obtain income, but other sources may also be required.
Recent data from the USA. ULAA must draw its course at a time when the end of the era of Brusser, or at least its transformation to a more restrictive role, has begun. Despite the current income of the healthy market, this will be a long -term challenge.
The first Internet browser was launched in 1991, and its source code was launched in 1993. With several open source browser projects for adoption, the actual test of the current browser is not its engine or central design, but creates a local ECOSYST, which makes it market and much. Platforms These are significant challenges for any browser built in India. It remains to be seen if ULAA can open new roads on this forehead and regain the global market more than more than $ 100 billion for browsers.
The writer is a physics professor at Iiser, Pune. The opinions expressed are personal
Posted on April 14, 2025