Microsoft has ended support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) and closes the chapter on its legacy browser. The company has been cautioning users about this end of life date for quite some time and also beckoning them to plan migrations to Microsoft Edge.
Its been a good run though…it is not often that a technology lasts for 27 years.
The end of support means that Microsoft will no longer roll out important security updates or bug fixes for the web browser.
In 1995, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 1.0 as an add-on to Windows 95. Later that year, IE 2.0 became the first Microsoft browser to offer Macintosh and Windows support. It remained a dominant browser throughout the ’90s, thanks to its tie to Windows and corporate use.
By 1999, Internet Explorer held 99% of the market. However, following a 2009 investigation, the European Commission fined Microsoft 561 million Euros ― more than $584 million in U.S. dollars ― for failing to offer users an easy way to choose their preferred web browser.
Now, fewer than 1% of internet users still use Internet Explorer (not the same as its replacement, Microsoft Edge) as their web browser.
