It is done! After 27 wholesome years, Internet Explorer has finally been laid to rest. Once the dominant web browser on the planet, the vintage application is now officially retired and out of support.
The big moment happened with the release of the June 2022 Patch Tuesday updates that went live last week. And these are the last security patches that Internet Explorer is going to get before being retired completely.
In other words, any bug or vulnerability discovered in the program will simply remain unfixed.
As for the legacy of what was the number on browser, there is much to talk.
IE, as it was lovingly known, boasted a 95% market share in 2004. But it soon started losing both market and mind share after the arrival of better and faster browsers like Firefox and Chrome. And then the rise of smartphones slowly destroyed its ubiquity.
Internet Explorer just could not keep up with the rapid changes in the online landscape led by a few alternative choices.
Of course, things changed quite rapidly in the world of Windows as well.
Internet Explorer 11 was the last version of this famous yet infamous browser. Microsoft bundled IE11 with Windows 8.1 as a modern default option in the operating system. And though it never quite reached the highs it was expected to, it became the second most used web browser in 2014, behind IE8.
But the situation changed for worse after the advent of Microsoft Edge in 2015, which was bundled as the default choice on Windows 10. This shiny new web browser received a new engine in 2020 — the same one that powers Chrome — and continues to grow from strength to strength.
Microsoft, for its part, says that the future of Internet Explorer is Edge. For good reason too, as it is now one of the more capable options in the extremely competitive web browser space.
While few people will mourn its passing, Internet Explorer is still used by many businesses as the underlying engine for their custom developed software. It is these organizations that will be the most affected by this retirement.
But it goes to show that no matter how dominant a position a product finds itself in, a decline always lurks in the shadows. And once these wheels start turning, it is nearly impossible to find a way back to previous glory.
June 15, 2022 is a date that will now live in memory, as the day when time came for Internet Explorer.
End of an era!
