Internet Explorer: The Free Fall Of The Former Windows Star
Investigating the twists and turns that caused the free fall of Internet Explorer, the browser that was called the “Star of Windows”.
A few weeks ago, in June 2022, Microsoft announced that it would no longer support Internet Explorer. This browser was officially shut down after 9801 days and will redirect its users to Microsoft Edge over time. Of course, IE mode will be available in Microsoft Edge until 2029 and can be useful for those users who need to work with Internet Explorer (for example, it can be useful to open old websites that are not compatible with new browsers).
This is not the whole story, and it should be said that Internet Explorer is still supported for very specific environments such as Windows server versions or Chinese government versions of Windows; so, it can be said that this browser will still technically work for quite some time, but in any case, Microsoft’s message to the general public is clear.
This was the end of Internet Explorer, the browser that many of us may have connected to the Internet for the first time with it, the browser that pushed aside all its competitors and reached the top in the first browser war but could do nothing in the second browser war and disappeared.
Before Internet Explorer
NCSA Mosaic was one of the most popular browsers, for the first time it showed the images and text together on the same page, and unlike other browsers of its time, it had some special appeals. Mosaic’s features inspired competitors, and some other browsers were developed based on Mosaic’s model.
Microsoft licensed a version of this browser and started to develop a browser called “Internet Explorer”; the first version of Internet Explorer was released in August 1995, and the first few versions of this browser had nothing to say, but due to the fact that Windows 95 conquered the market at the same time, Microsoft used this power and placed other products in the lives of users. This decision led to the fact that the browser “Internet Explorer” was synonymous with the Internet for many ordinary users at that time.
The next step was the integration of Windows and the Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft decided to integrate Internet Explorer 4 with Windows 98, so If you were one of those people who bought computers with Windows operating system at that time, the Internet Explorer browser was your default browser to reach the Internet; this decision increased the share of IE and decreased the share of Netscape, the main competitor of IE, in the browser market. But that was not all, The US government pursued legal action against Microsoft and filed an antitrust case against Microsoft, which Microsoft eventually lost and had to allow users to install and use the browser of their choice.
Sixth Version, The Architect Of The Decline
The sixth version of Microsoft Internet Explorer was released at the end of August 2001. At the time of this version’s release, Microsoft had a market share of about 90% in the browser market. This figure was so large that even Google Chrome cannot match it today.
Internet Explorer 6 had nothing to say in its own way, and even several years after its release, many features were not added to it. Microsoft did not even act quickly to fix the bugs for various reasons, such as challenges within the company, the lack of competitors, or perhaps Microsoft’s pride in the browser market(and some other reasons), which caused these shortcomings. And also the numerous security problems of Internet Explorer had become a nightmare for Microsoft and the users, and if we look at these things along with many other things, we will see that all of this was an indication of Microsoft’s weakness in the development of IE. Internet Explorer 6 was the last version of this browser to carry Microsoft’s name, and version 7 was released 5 years after the sixth version with the full name Windows Internet Explorer in 2006.
Microsoft’s shortcomings offered competitors a new chance to enter the market, including Firefox, which evolved from the Netscape browser and managed to achieve a double-digit market share by 2006. The next step was the release of Safari by Apple. Microsoft had invested $150 million in Apple and signed a 5-year deal that would see Microsoft support “Office” within the Mac operating system and Apple would set IE as the default browser for the Mac.
Google dealt a death blow to Internet Explorer with the release of Google Chrome. It had an attractive user interface and features that quickly set it apart from its competitors, and the other important point was that Chrome’s developer was “Google”. A company whose name is synonymous with an online search.
The Chrome browser was launched in 2008. In those years, Google was very popular among Internet users, which led to the browser being very well received and overtaking Internet Explorer in 2012 to become the most popular browser in the world.
When The Microsoft Edge Comes In
In 2009 Internet Explorer 8 was released, in 2011 IE9, and in 2012, the same year that “Google Chrome” became the most widely used browser, it was Internet Explorer version 10 and in 2013 Internet Explorer version 11 or rather the last version of Internet Explorer Launched on the market. Different browsers flourished, but Internet Explorer became less useful day by day, and in 2015 Microsoft introduced a new browser called Edge.
Microsoft Edge browser kept the blue color of Internet Explorer, solved many bugs, and made many changes, but these changes could not solve the problem as it lagged behind its competitors in many features, and also many websites were not compatible with it. It was not possible to use extensions developed for Chrome or Firefox. These are some of the problems that the Edge browser had at the beginning, which made this browser a new problem for Microsoft.
According to StatCounter statistics, the first version of the Edge browser did not reach more than 5% of usage share, and at the end of 2018, Microsoft again accepted the failure and said that the new version of Edge will be developed based on the codebase of Google’s Chromium project. A group of people believed that Edge has Microsoft’s packaging but is a kind of Google browser, and compared this issue to Microsoft buying the NCSA Mosaic license instead of developing a browser from scratch.
With this decision, Microsoft managed to gain a foothold in the new era of the browser war, and according to StatCounter statistics, it reached the rank of the third most used browser, overtaking Firefox, and it was also able to add new features to the “Chromium” project, support various Google Chrome extensions and have greater compatibility with websites.
Microsoft Edge has seen good growth so far, although this growth is due to the decline in Firefox’s market share, not Chrome’s. in any case, this browser can be a good alternative to Internet Explorer, and it’s even possible that with the right choices it will become a serious competitor for Google Chrome, repeating history in a different way this time.
Resources:
Internet Explorer was once synonymous with the Internet, but today it’s gone for good
Goodbye, Internet Explorer. Thanks for the memories (and the malware)
RIP Internet Explorer — the browser that changed the web for good (and bad)
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Is Now Officially Shut After 27 Years
Microsoft starts automatically redirecting Internet Explorer users to Edge
