A Systematic Review of the Tripartite Crisis in Modern Web Browsers: Resource Inefficiency, Privacy Failures, and Automation Gap

Abstract

Intelligent automation at low levels, privacy, and resource efficiency are the three major deficiencies in web browsers, which impact billions of users. This review, which examined 48 research papers, shows that modern browsers (such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge) favour security over efficiency and innovation. We observe that the multi-process architecture uses 234-287% more memory than required, browser fingerprinting uniquely identifies 99.24% of users, and AI-driven automation completes 14% of tasks. We present IntelliBrowse, a tri-layered architecture that adapts memory consumption, improves privacy and incorporates AI automation. It seeks to optimise memory usage by 40-60%, lower the entropy of fingerprinting, and enhance automation. This review suggests that such shortcomings can only be removed by significant architectural changes.