Microsoft is pushing another nail in the coffin of its most hated product

08/18/2020 Technology


Microsoft announced this week that its Workplace Chat Software Teams will no longer be available on Internet Explorer as of November 30, and its 365 apps, including Office products, will no longer work on IE starting August 17, 2021.

It’s an enormous decision that adds yet another nail in the coffin of one of the most hated software of all time. But IE is not going away yet.

IE is amazingly still running after 25 years. Once the most widely used web browser, Internet Explorer has been on a steady downward trajectory for years. The share of the browser market fell below the 50% threshold in 2010 and now stands at around 4%, according to browser usage tracker NetMarketShare. Google’s (GOOGL) Chrome is currently the browser leader, accounting for 71% of the market share.
Internet Explorer debuted in 1995 as part of Windows 95 and became a direct hit. It successfully killed the Netscape Navigator, and it gained a virtual monopoly in the early 2000s. At its peak in 2002, Internet Explorer dominated 95% of the browser market.

But Microsoft failed to innovate, leaving Internet Explorer 6 alone to collect dust and spider webs for five years. That frustrated customers and sent them on the flight to greener pastures. Internet Explorer became synonymous with bugs, security issues, and outdated technology.

Microsoft (MSFT) finally released IE7 in 2006, but the damage was done – Microsoft made way for Firefox and then Chrome to overcome it.

It was not until Internet Explorer 9 in 2011 that Microsoft released a modern browser. To this day, IE does not support extensions, it is not available on non-Windows devices, and it does not sync with other devices by default – all chapters of Chrome and Firefox.

Microsoft recognizes that IE is not ideal for web browsing.

“Customers have been using IE 11 since 2013 when the online environment was much less sophisticated than the landscape today,” the company said in its announcement Monday. “Since then, open web standards and newer browsers – like the new Microsoft Edge – have enabled better, more innovative online experiences.”

That’s why Microsoft has been trying to kill Internet Explorer for the past five years – without fail.

In an interview “Ask me something” on Reddit in 2014, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer engineers acknowledged that the company was considering a name change to ‘separate ourselves from negative perceptions’ across the browser.
Instead, Microsoft developed a brand new browser, and released Edge in 2015. But Edge did not actually replace IE – Internet Explorer to this day is pre-installed on Windows PCs next to Edge.
Microsoft has continued to ship IE with Windows to ensure that enterprise apps function properly. Businesses tend to be very slow to adopt new browser versions, especially when customizing applications for them.

Most Windows 10 PC owners have probably never noticed that IE is installed on their computers. Edge, a modern browser, is based on Google’s open source Chrome code, and has gained far more traction than IE.

Microsoft said this week that IE is not going away yet.

“We want to make it clear that IE 11 is not going away and that our customers’ own legacy IE 11 apps and investments will continue to work,” Microsoft said.

But the company notes that its latest version of the Edge browser supports web apps built for IE, so customers do not have to switch between browsers. Maybe IE won’t last forever, in fact.

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