On 15th June, 2022, Microsoft pushed the 27 years old IE: Internet Explorer app to the dustbin of tech history. Its first version was released by Microsoft in 1995,, when web surfing was dominated by Netscape Navigator. Once upon a time, it was a dominant browser which the surfers loved to hate and a few loved to adore. In doing so, Microsoft has put it in league with Blackberry phones, dial up Modems, Palm Pilots and Pagers.

It was not a bolt from the blue. MS has already announced it a year ago. It has asked users to shift to Microsoft Edge, which was launched in 2015. Edge is compatible with legacy websites and apps. IE and Windows were tied up. Many used IE by default instead of Netscape Navigator. Such simultaneous loading of Windows and IE led to the suing of MS in 1997. In 2002, MS agreed to settle the anti-trust battle where it crushed the rival products. In European Union too MS attracted the charge of harming the rivals such as Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera and Google’s Chrome.

IE too had shortcomings — it was slow, used to crash and was vulnerable to hacking. At the beginning of the millennium, its market share was 90 per cent. It continued to decline in the face of more appealing alternatives.

Chrome today has acquired dominant position with 65 per cent share worldwide. Edge lags behind, and has barely 4 per cent share, slightly ahead of Firefox.