Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge will soon be releasing their 100th version. But this launch won't be filled with celebrations, but rather with technical issues that could mess up the internet.
Switching to version 100 may result in some websites not loading due to bugs and compatibility issues. Much like the Y2K bug that haunted the internet towards the turn of 2000.
This problem is caused by the 'user-agent' (UA), a line of code that tells the server what browser is being used. Most websites today can only read UA with two digits.
About a decade ago, this problem also occurred because the website could only read UA with one digit. For example, in 2009 some websites couldn't load in Firefox 10 because their script read Firefox 10 as the outdated Firefox 1.0.
Chrome, Firefox, and Edge are currently the most popular desktop browsers and so far the issue has been limited to these three. Other browsers are still far from version 100, so it shouldn't be a problem any time soon.
Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft have been warning about this problem for months. This version 100 update will be released in March 2022 for Chrome and Edge, followed by Forefox in May 2022.
Major milestones: Chrome and Firefox will soon reach version 100! ️
The version number is going up to three digits and both browsers are working on mitigating the potential impact of this change. Learn more about it and pitch in to help with testing ️https://t.co/FtPl4CRjfk
— Chrome Developers (@ChromiumDev) February 15, 2022
Mozilla and Google are already running experiments to test websites and report crashes. There were some fairly minor issues, but websites that were significantly impacted such as HBO Go, Bethesda, and Yahoo, as quoted from The Verge, Friday (18/2/2022).
As terrible as it sounds, the three companies have done a lot of preparation to make the transition to version 100 as smooth as possible. Developers can enable a custom flag in current versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge to make the browser report as version 100 and help with the testing process.
If a more serious problem later arises, Google and Mozilla have prepared a fix method, namely by freezing the Chrome and Firefox versions at version 99. While Microsoft has not revealed the backup plan