The technological world sometimes moves so fast that we don’t even realize, if it seems like yesterday that we were sending buzzes through Messenger or uploading photos to and in this coming and going of technological platforms, Microsoft has announced the progressive but definitive retirement of Internet Explorer, the browser that dominated most of the internet browser market in the early 2000s.
But the goodbye to Internet Explorer will be gradual, since the browser is not completely dead and it will be replaced by a more modern and secure browser called Microsoft Edge. The company will be responsible for integrating all websites and applications based on the old browser.
Goodbye Explorer, hello Edge
Microsoft will no longer provide technical support or security updates for Internet Exploreras it wants to focus all its efforts on Edge, which is already available on mobile devices, Mac and even Linux, so it is not limited to just Windows.
Edge was released in 2015 as part of the operating system to coexist with Internet Explorer, however, in May of last year Microsoft announced its definitive withdrawal by ceasing to be compatible with some versions of Windows 10.
An essential part of the union between Internet Explorer and Edge will be the migration of some corporate web applications in which Explorer is still the only access. Given this, Sean Lyndersay, company general managerI affirm that “Over the next few months, opening Internet Explorer will progressively redirect users to our new modern browser, Microsoft Edge with IE mode. Users will still see the Internet Explorer icon on their devices (such as on the taskbar or Start menu), but if they click to open Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge will open instead with easy access to IE mode. Eventually, Internet Explorer will be permanently disabled as part of a future Windows update, at which point the Internet Explorer icons on your devices will be removed.”
To facilitate this integration, the button for “reload in IE mode” in the Edge toolbar and every 30 days users will be asked if they want to open a page in Internet Explorer mode next timeso as more sites get updated, Edge will become the default browser.
History of Explorer: the most used browser in the 2000s
For the year 1995, Microsoft’s priority was the web since , its former CEO, had a clear vision of the future by stating that web developments would mark the course of the entire industry for a long time.
This same year was the first time that Internet Explorer was integrated for free into the Windows 95 operating system and it quickly took over the browser market thanks to the fact that it was included in Windows, the most widely used PC operating system in the world at the time.
During the year 1998, the Department of Justice of the United States, presented an antitrust case against Microsoft that, since the federal agency affirmed that the integration of Internet Explorer in Windows 95 was a “illegal connection”. This situation caused the company to rewrite the terms of agreements with technology manufacturers and let them remove the icons from the Windows browser to allow them to show other browsers.
Despite this, it was one of the most used web browsers since 1999, reaching 95% of the quota of use between the years 2002 and 2003. Over time, its market share was declining due to various security flaws and response speed issues. In 2008, Chrome emerged and ended up dethroning Internet Explorer as the favorite browser.
Taking into account that it had an HTML5 language unable to keep pace with other browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla or Safari, in addition to the fact that mobile phones became the most used devices by Internet users, the great web became a space where there was no place for IE, so the browser, who held the largest market share among browsers.
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