Developed in 2004 by Thoughtworks for internal usage, Selenium is a widely used tool for automated testing of web applications. Initially, Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) was being used by multiple organizations and testers worldwide and saved a lot of time and effort by the benefits of automation testing with Selenium. The major downside of automation testing with Selenium IDE was that it would only work with Firefox. To resolve the issue, Selenium RC(Remote Control) was used, which enabled Selenium to support automated cross-browser testing.
But currently, websites are becoming more robust with multiple features. Also, nowadays, with the majority of the organization making a mobile-friendly website, testers have to keep in mind that a website should work properly not only in desktop but also in Android as well as iOS. Selenium RC gradually lagged behind since it did not have the feature for testing browser compatibility of a website across multiple devices. To overcome all these issues, Selenium Webdriver stepped in.