Internet Explorer is history: after 27 years, the US software giant Microsoft officially ended its support for the web browser on Wednesday. From now on there will be no more updates for the browser; whoever clicks on it will be redirected to Microsoft Edge, which is designed to replace Explorer.
Microsoft Announces “Internet Explorer Is Officially Retired”
“Internet Explorer (IE) is officially retired and will no longer receive support as of today,” read a Microsoft blog post. The Internet has evolved, as have the web browsers available. “The incremental improvements on Internet Explorer didn’t match the general improvements on the web, so we started again.”
The first version of Internet Explorer was released in 1995, and numerous people surfed the Internet with the Microsoft browser for the first time. However, for many Internet users, the relationship with Internet Explorer developed into a love-hate relationship: compared to other browsers, Explorer was considered slow and prone to technical problems.
Market share of 65 percent: Google Chrome is the most used web browser
While Internet Explorer still had a market share of 90 percent in the early 2000s, its success has continued to decline in recent years. According to the analysis website Statcounter, Google Chrome is the most used web browser today with a market share of almost 65 percent.
In the online service Twitter, numerous users said goodbye to Internet Explorer in a humorous way. “You took a long time to download stuff, you kept freezing and got replaced by other browsers pretty easily,” wrote one user using the hashtag #ripinternetexplorer. “But here goes one of the first browsers I ever used and I have a lot of good memories thanks to it.”
