I wonder how many people know what the term browser means. Recently I visited one of my client, he asked me “Where do I click to connect internet? There was a letter “blue e” on my desktop, it got lost! ” Most of my clients are small business owners.

From time to time, I go to their offices, and fix their computers, update their software, install virus program, etc. When they ask me a question, I try to explain to them as plainly as possible. Usually they listen to me carefully, sometimes taking notes. I ask them many times “do you understand what I am saying?”.  Generally they say “yes”. After working 9 years in the computer field, I learned that, I need to double check. Just because they say “yes, I understand”, that is not necessarily the case. So I ask several question just to make sure that, they understand. If they still can not give correct answer, I explain to them again more simply, without using technical jargon. It is always challenging  without using proper terms.

Apparently, Google had the same question in their mind, and asked people “what is a browser” and “what is a search engine”. You can watch the video to see answers.

What is a browser?

“Less than 8 % of people who were interviewed that day knew what a browser was.”

Last week my client showed me his desktop and pointed to “Bing” and asked me “what the heck is that?” Bing is a new search engine from Microsoft. It became default search engine for Internet Explorer browser.

So here is the explanations for everyone:

A Browser is short term for a software application on your computer. It displays Web pages, which are written in HTML. The popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox and for Mac users Safari. Browsers can display graphics, animations and text. Most modern browsers can present multimedia information, including sound and video, though they require plug-ins for some formats such as flash.
Some common browsers are: Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and for Mac users; Apple Safari, Opera.

As a short list:

• Major Browsers: Opera, Firefox, Safari
• Cross-Platform Browsers: Mozilla, Flock, Mozilla SeaMonkey
• Windows Browsers: K-Meleon and Google Chrome
• Macintosh Browsers: Camino, OmniWeb and iCab
• Linux Browsers: Konqueror, Galeon and Epiphany

Then, what is a search engine?

Search engine is a  website that stores catalog of websites. More accurately we can say  search engine is really a group of system  such as robots to look for a data. Such as like Google,  Yahoo, MSN (now it is called Bing),  Alta Vista,  so on that enable users to search for documents on the web.
Typically, a search engine works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. That means search engines look through their own databases of information in order to find what it is that you are looking for. Do not confuse yourself thinking Search engines and directories are the same thing; They are not the same thing.  Search engines automatically create web site listings by using spiders that “crawl” web pages, index their information, and then follows that site’s links to other pages. Spiders return to already-crawled sites on regular basis in order to check for updates or changes on documents, pages, and everything that these spiders find goes into the search engine database.

I hope this brief explanation helps you to understand.

Written by NUR KARLICA ROY