Well, actually, there was only a short time, when more than one had been widely used. Something like Mosaic - Netscape - IE - Mozilla/Firefox/The Browser Now Known As Vivaldi/... - Chrome

I seem to remember Netscape and IE having had similar market shares for a while at that time (the infamous first browser war), but my memories might be distorted to be honest.

They did, even worse, there was a time when both Netscape and IE were common. But also multiple versions with incompatible rendering and features.

Netscape was the only game in town at one point. From memory, the three big transitions have been Mosaic > Navigator > IE > Chrome.

Here's hoping for another one, just to keep them on their toes.

Just before Chrome, Firefox was quite popular, at least among the terminally online. But it wasn't enough to take the crown iirc.

I think I remember Firefox topping out around 30% just before Chrome was released.