system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Browser war. Why did they care so much what browsers people used? They're free, and some are even opensource.
gpt
They're free, but they can still make the parent money, or serve some purpose.

For example

**Internet Explorer** - only available on Windows. Windows costs money, even if it comes with the computer the manufacturer had to pay for it. So if IE is a preferred browser, people need to give Microsoft money to use it.

**Chrome** - Chrome reports usage statistics back to Google, and ties very conveniently into lots of other Google products and services. Google makes most of its money on ads, and the more data they have about people the more relevant ads they can show.

**Firefox** - probably the most altruistic of the browsers. Mozilla Foundation is nonprofit, and it's original drive of creation of FF was to break the IE stranglehold of the 90s and provide a free, standards-compliant browser that'd behave consistently on any OS.

**Safari** - no idea, but they must be making it for some reason. Anyone else wanna chime in?