How does HTTP_USER_AGENT work? [duplicate]

Answer 1

http://www.useragentstring.com/

Visit that page, it'll give you a good explanation of each element of your user agent.

Mozilla:

MozillaProductSlice. Claims to be a Mozilla based user agent, which is only true for Gecko browsers like Firefox and Netscape. For all other user agents it means 'Mozilla-compatible'. In modern browsers, this is only used for historical reasons. It has no real meaning anymore

Answer 2

The user agent string is a text that the browsers themselves send to the webserver to identify themselves, so that websites can send different content based on the browser or based on browser compatibility.

Mozilla is a browser rendering engine (the one at the core of Firefox) and the fact that Chrome and IE contain the string Mozilla/4 or /5 identifies them as being compatible with that rendering engine.