Obituary: Microsoft's Internet Explorer

Microsoft is finally putting Internet Explorer out of its misery and retiring it in 2022

So, it's finally happening. Internet Explorer is going away for good. Not immediately, it is still on life support and will remain in the ICU for another year but after that it's going to be yanked out of existence.

We can all honestly say that no one is surprised, I struggle to remember the last time I even clicked on the large 'e' icon but when the news finally hit there was a certain amount of sadness and relief that it was finally being put of its misery.

As a 90's kid who grew up in the strange era of a lot of first's in the country, the Internet Explorer was my introduction to the world wide web. I mean that and those pitiful dial-up modems that would jam up phone lines and would disconnect if anyone called (thank god that technology did not catch on!) but I digress, for many like myself, the introduction of the world wide web was synonyms with the Internet Explorer.

It was the first taste of what a web browser could do and how expansive the internet really was. We can all agree however, it has been steady slope downwards since then. For a lot of us, our beginnings with the Internet Explorer were kind of forced because we didn't really know we had a better option and we didn't for quite a while.

It took a literal court case against Microsoft and a settlement with the US Department of Justice to allow competitors to get a shoe into the door. From 2003 to 2014, the market share for Internet Explorer slowly declined to the point of being negligible. Google's Chrome browser that released in 2008 was the death knell for the struggling web navigator and its market was almost completely wiped out.

It also did not help that Internet Explorer was a common target for trojans, viruses and any other malware that you could think of but that wasn't entirely its fault. Anything that is popular or like in the case of Internet Explorer bundled with operating system is going to be targeted for exploits.

Internet Explorer was also pretty slow compared to the competition, despite the big 'M's' best efforts, there is a noticeable difference when using IE compared to whatever else is out there. Even Microsoft acknowledged this by moving away from it and building a new browser from scratch instead and with the recent shift to chromium, removing any trace of Internet Explorer from its new browser.

Heck, even Microsoft's Office 365 and Microsoft Teams don't support Internet Explorer anymore. How is that for a vote of confidence?

In closing, I would like to say that there is sadness and certain degree of nostalgia with that big 'e' logo but when you remove the rose tinted glasses, you realise that you are thankful for the memories but damn if you overstayed your welcome. Cheers, Internet Explorer, it was fun while it lasted.