I'd say the reason there wasn't more browser competition is simply because browsers are hellishly complex pieces of software that are tremendously expensive to

I'd say the reason there wasn't more browser competition is simply because browsers are hellishly complex pieces of software that are tremendously expensive to engineer. Look at how long it took from Netscape starting Mozilla to the first viable and competitive consumer version of Firefox. Even Microsoft itself couldn't reboot its browser (Edge) and compete with Chrome. And Chrome wasn't even a from-scratch rewrite, it was a fork of WebKit, which was a fork of KHTML. There's no money in the creation and sale of web browsers, and given the tremendous engineering complexity in making a modern one, I highly doubt there will be any more "from scratch" entrants into the market besides Firefox, simply due to the fact that there's no great money in it, even for Microsoft. Is anyone could to rewrite Unix from scratch and not use the Linux kernel or GNU userland (or BSD userland)? It would be insane. At best, people can fork and replace small pieces, like a JIT, or the Kernel, or UI.