The end is finally near for Internet Explorer, one of Microsoft's most-reviled products that refused to die. Microsoft announced this week that it will end support for Internet Explorer 11 on June 15, 2022. That final nail in the coffin came after years of flirting with IE's demise. For example, in August 2020, Microsoft turned its back on IE for its own products. Workplace chat software Teams stopped working with IE last fall, and its 365 apps (including Office) will no longer work on IE by mid-summer 2021. Once the most-used web browser, Internet Explorer had been on a steady downward trajectory for nearly two decades. Its share of the browser market fell below the 50% threshold in 2010 and now sits at about 5%, according to browser usage tracker NetMarketShare. Google's (GOOGL) Chrome is the browser leader, commanding a 69% share of the market.
In its death announcement, Microsoft said Internet Explorer is slow, no longer practical for or compatible with many modern web tasks, and is far less secure than modern browsers. Yet IE has miraculously managed to stick around for 26 years. Microsoft has continued to ship IE with Windows to ensure that corporate apps keep functioning properly. Corporations tend to be very slow to adopt new browser versions, particularly if they custom-build applications for them. Most Windows 10 PC owners probably never noticed that IE is installed on their computers. Edge, Microsoft's modern browser, is based on Google's open source Chrome code, and has gained much more traction than IE in recent years. It's unclear if Microsoft will stop installing IE on Windows PCs by default once the company discontinues support for IE, although that would be likely. Microsoft's latest version of the Edge browser supports web apps built for IE so customers don't have to keep switching between browsers. So IE has at long last outlived its usefulness.
Credits:
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/internet-explorer-is-dead-heres-when-microsoft-is-pulling-the-plug
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