RIP Internet Explorer — and good riddance
Microsoft has started rolling out an update to Windows 10 that entirely disables Internet Explorer, signalling the final death knell for the nearly 28-year-old browser.
In a recent amendment to a Windows IT Pro blog post, the company explained that it had already permanently disabled the retired and out-of-support Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) desktop app through an Edge update on most Windows 10 versions.
“This update will be rolled out over the span of a few days up to a week, as is standard for Microsoft Edge updates,” the company said.
Microsoft also said that IE11 visual references, including the IE11 icons on the Start Menu and taskbar, would be removed in a Windows security update scheduled for 13 June 2023.
“All remaining consumer and commercial devices that were not already redirected from IE11 to Microsoft Edge were redirected with the Microsoft Edge update,” Microsoft stated.
“Users will be unable to reverse the change. Additionally, redirection from IE11 to Microsoft Edge will be included as part of all future Microsoft Edge updates.
Although Windows 10 shipped with Microsoft’s older version of Edge as its main browser, it continued to provide Internet Explorer for compatibility with certain older websites and legacy web technologies.
Microsoft officially ended support for Internet Explorer on 15 June 2022, but the few people who still used the browser could continue accessing it.
The fall of a giant
Microsoft Internet Explorer debuted in 1995 as part of an add-on for Windows 95.
By bundling the browser for free with Windows in the following years, Microsoft grew its market share to roughly 95% of the world’s web browser usage by 2003.
The launches of Mozilla’s Firefox in 2004 and especially Google Chrome in 2008 would quickly see the browser’s popularity decline. By 2010, Internet Explorer’s market share had shrunk to 50%.
Unlike its rivals, Microsoft repeatedly failed to align Internet Explorer with web technology standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium to advance the capabilities of HTML and CSS.
Its shortcomings included various severe security and privacy vulnerabilities, while critics also lambasted Microsoft for developing the browser with third-party source code without paying royalties to the authors.
The old version of Edge, launched in 2015, failed to reclaim market share from its competitors, with one major reason being its support for only a handful of extensions. Microsoft also elected to keep its proprietary rendering engine.
Microsoft’s revamped Edge, launched in 2020, is based on Google’s open-source Chromium codebase.
The browser has been widely praised for significant improvements over its predecessors and some performance benefits over its rivals.
But Microsoft has been criticised for seemingly trying to coerce Windows users into using Edge over their preferred third-party browsers.
Among its many moves in this regard, it has made Edge the default browser for opening weather apps and other widgets on Windows 10 and Windows 11 and blocked users from setting other browsers to open them instead.
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