We’re used to the “war” motif used to describe competition in the technology sector. Apple verses Microsoft, Intel verses AMD, Microsoft verses. Netscape, Microsoft verses Everybody Else.

Because many of the players have either dominated — Microsoft, Intel — or found niche markets they can dominate — Apple — the wars have quieted down.

Suddenly because of Google, the browsers wars are back.

A quick history lesson: The original, dominant Web browser was called Mosaic, and when interest in the Internet began to catch fire in the early ’90s, this early browser, co-authored by Marc Andreessen out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was the hands-down favorite.

Microsoft’s early Internet Explorer licensed Mosaic’s source code as Microsoft worked furiously to catch up with the Internet revolution it had not successfully predicted.

Mosaic creator Marc Andreessen went on to found Netscape, and for years Netscape was the browser leader until two improbable things happened: One, Microsoft caught and passed Netscape in quality with Internet Explorer 4.0; and, second, Netscape Communications allowed American Online to purchase it as both companies tried to delay their impending collapses.

Both flamed out together.

Meanwhile, the spirit of Netscape — or at least its original source code — lives on in the Mozilla Corporation, which famously created Firefox, the first browser in years to challenge Microsoft’s dominance in the browser field. It is, without question, the best browser on the market today. As in the case of all browsers, it has the advantage of being free.

Now, as we’re all up-to-date, comes the re-ignition of the browser wars. Google is shaking things up with its Chrome Web browser.

Why would Google get into the browser field? There’s a simple answer, really. Google has led the way — not very far under the radar — in developing Web 2.0 applications. Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Docs, and Gmail are solid examples of this.

Naturally, a company hoping, via the Web, to compete with Microsoft applications such as its Office suite, wouldn’t want to depend on a Microsoft browser to run them. Enter Chrome, meant to be the browser platform for Google’s Web 2.0 apps.

The trouble is, currently all of the browsers are in some form or another, uh, broken. It doesn’t make for a very exciting war.

I’ve been beta-testing Google Chrome for about two weeks. I find it doesn’t handle HTML consistently, it resists loading certain Web pages, and it crashes from time to time. It’s a beta test version that’s not ready for prime time.

Microsoft’s browsers have lost their luster ever since 6.0, with 7.0 being buggy, slow and clumsy. Its latest, 8.0, is also in beta. It remains buggy, with bells and whistles I’m not sure we need. Microsoft has copied the best features of Firefox without functioning nearly as well. It also renders some HTML code incorrectly.

It pains me to say that Firefox hasn’t been acting well either. Out of the blue, Firefox has stopped handling YouTube-style video. I’ve tried a variety of fixes, but the only one that currently works is emptying the Firefox cache each time you restart the browser. You do this with a setting in Options. It’s a pain.

I would welcome another browser war, if I thought it would lead to better browsers. Now, I’d just like one that actually works.

Calvin Ross writes a weekly computer column for the Napa Valley Register. His Web page is napanet.net/—calross/