Microsoft to retire Internet Explorer browser and redirect users to Edge

Microsoft has announced it will kill off its much-maligned legacy internet browser Internet Explorer close to 27 years after it graced desktop computers in 1995.

Internet Explorer was the gateway to the internet for people born prior to Generation Z, in an era when Microsoft dominated the tech world, before Google, Facebook and TikTok, and when the browser had to be installed on to computers using a CD-rom.

Although market-dominant Chrome suffers from the same issues that plagued Internet Explorer, the shift away from the need to support the legacy browser will be a relief for web developers.

The company ended support for Internet Explorer in Teams in 2020, and announced plans to stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 in web browsers in Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 in August 2020.

Despite the gradual demise of Internet Explorer, it still has strong brand recognition. A Roy Morgan survey commissioned by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in September 2021 found the browsers people were most aware of were Chrome (95%), followed by Internet Explorer (85%), Firefox (81%), Apple Safari (80%) and Edge (69%).

While the bundled web browser in Windows may have been an advantage to Microsoft in the past, the company said people were now aware of other options, and on desktop PCs, Microsoft Edge has only a 9% marketshare.