As of today, June 15, 2022, Internet Explorer (IE) is officially retired and out of support.
IE provided 27 years of access to the world's information. For many people, IE was the first door that opened the World Wide Web. It was 1995 when IE was first released as part of an add-on package for Windows 95 and in 8 years became the most widely used web browser in the world with a 95% usage share in 2003. In fact it was IE's dominance during the early 2000s that was a key factor in the U.S. Government's antitrust suit against Microsoft.
While most people associate IE with the Windows operating system, Microsoft actually developed versions of the browser for the Macintosh, UNIX, Xbox, and their now-defunct mobile OSes Windows CE and Windows Phone.
It's fairly common knowledge that many developers and computer geeks strongly disliked IE. With significant gaps between new releases and version updates as well as the fact that in the mid-2000s IE did not support modern JS and CSS features, IE was the brunt of many a joke amongst technophiles. On March 4, 2010 many people held mock funerals for IE6.
What's Next
During the coming months, when users open IE they will be redirected to Microsoft Edge with IE mode. Users will still see the Internet Explorer icon on their devices (such as on the taskbar or in the 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 disabled permanently as part of a future Windows Update, at which point the Internet Explorer icons on users’ devices will be removed.
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