The Internet Explorer browser interface on a phone. Photo: Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Microsoft's Internet Explorer sunsets today, after more than 20 years.
Driving the news: The announcement came last year from Microsoft that they would be retiring the browser today and that they would be shifting their focus to their new browser Microsoft Edge.
- Microsoft Edge will be able to access "older, legacy websites and applications" through an Internet Explorer mode, according to Microsoft's announcement.
- Its few remaining users were devastated.
- “I’m still trying to process it,” Sam Maumalanga told the Wall Street Journal. “I’ve used it for so long—it’s the first thing I get on on my laptop.”
Our thought bubble: The IE browser lay at the heart of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft that consumed the industry for five years beginning in 1997 and came close to a government-mandated breakup of the tech giant, per Axios' Scott Rosenberg.
- At the time, critics feared that Microsoft's effort to weave the browser into its operating system would give the firm a dominant position over the nascent web.
- They settled in 2002, per CBS News.
- Internet Explorer was the dominant web browser for a while with over 90% of the market share in the early 2000s, per CBS News.
- The Chrome browser now dominates the world market with roughly a 65% share, followed by Safari, CBS reports.