I remember when Interner Explorer (IE) was one of the most common terms you’d ever hear when discussing the internet. As common as Windows or AOL, it was the dominant option for so long until Chrome came along and messed everything up for Microsoft. Alternative options like Opera and Netscape Navigator came along for some, it wasn’t until Mozilla came out with Firefox in 2004 that users started jumping ship. Once Google Chrome came along, Internet Explorer started becoming an afterthought with how unreliable it could be at times. Regardless, IE was a staple for so long.
Now, newer generations have only been hearing about it in the history books. Despite the fact that the browser has still been available all the way up to Windows 10 (it was removed completely for Windows 11). It just wasn’t openly advertised as being there for you to use, Instead, you’d have to click on the Start Menu and start typing “Internet Explorer” for it to pop up in the list of available applications.
June 15th (tomorrow) will lead to the official deprecation of the browser. Although it has been on a long journey toward its end. Support for it was mostly deprecated a long time ago as the world moved ahead to work on stronger security measures, better features, and a more reliable browsing experience that doesn’t leak all of your memory out (as bad). Most websites don’t even bother to cross-support it any longer. The latest version of IE is 11, which was released back in 2013.
To be honest, the browser should have been eliminated a long time ago (IMO). However, there were a select few that held on for whatever reason. Despite it leading to a broken browsing experience as you browse across a website that no longer supports it (or never did to begin with depending on its age).
Users are left with Microsoft’s Edge browser, along with the Firefox and Chrome alternatives that have continued to reign strong. Not to mention Safari for Mac users, as well as a number of other alternatives that have a small piece of the pie as well.
Currently, Chrome and Safari have the lead as they are the most common browsers in use right now. Firefox, despite it being a fantastic browser again, has actually fallen quite a bit in the charts. In fact, it represented less than 4% of internet traffic by the end of last year. I would have expected that it would have done much better in recent years due to some long-needed updates that came to the browser. However, the internet has spoken, and it doesn’t look too good for Mozilla. Hopefully, Firefox won’t find itself being the next name on the chopping block.
So that’s it. IE is officially gone tomorrow. Thank you Internet Explorer for giving us so many memories on the internet. You weren’t perfect, and many times you left users pretty mad at their PC when you crashed or suffered from some unexplainable bug. However, the memories are there nonetheless and you will never be forgotten. At least, when it comes to the internet history books.
