Internet Explorer Is Dead: Long Live the Internet Explorer!
Internet Explorer Is Dead: Long Live the Internet Explorer!
It's been a week since the Internet Explorer died and here we are a few days later, paying it a little homage Internet Explorer style.
It was summer 1994 when the project Windows directed by Thomas Reardon was born and which Bengamin Silvka would take the reigns of. For creating that browser, they took the source code of Spyglass, INC. Mosaic, one of the first market browsers. The objective was competing against Netscape Navigator, who started dominating the market at the time. It was born what would be one of the high reference browsers at international level, and it had 28 years of life ahead.
There are few people nowadays, apart from generation Z, that did not use Internet Explorer at some point. It's true that it didn't have the best press throughout its history, even worse during the last few years, but there were many situations where it became essential.
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From the moment it was born, this browser has been revamped up to 11 times, the last one being in 2013 with Internet Explorer 11.
After getting stuck in a way, and incapable of competing at the same level of other current browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc, Microsoft started working on its replacement, Edge and a year ago they announced that the end of the legendary browser was shortly coming.
"The Internet Explorer 11 application will be removed and it will stop getting technical support on 15th June 2022 for certain Windows 10 versions", indicated Microsoft in a blog entry. "Microsoft Edge is faster, safer and offers a core modern browsing experience than that of IE. in addition it solves a key problem: compatibility with old websites and applications", they pointed out in their blog.
Although at the beginning of the 2000 it overcame almost the whole market, throughout those 10 years, Internet Explorer started losing its influence little by little until 2012, when it was beaten by Google Chrome.
Last year, some applications and services such as Microsoft 365 already stopped supporting Internet Explorer
Chaos for administrations and companies
Although this is a goodbye, it does not mean the complete death of the browser though, but it does put an end to support by Microsoft, so vulnerabilities and performance bugs will become a problem.
An area particularly affected by this fact is the Spanish public adminsitration, since it depends exclusively on that browser for many transactions and for the access of public servants.
Internet Explorer's end coming was old news since at least five years ago but still it caught by surprise more people than expected. It's true that activities won't stop, but there will be certain transactions that won't be able to be carried out, at least in the same way people were used to, and the procedures that still require IE will have to be updated no doubt. Luckily, Microsoft Edge allows for now to use an "IE mode", that although it is not a browser as such, it is a compatibility solution that enables smooth performance while updates get ready for the final touches.
Another striking case is that of Japan. A country known for its technological developments where companies also depended greatly on IE. As they explain at Computer Engineering & Consulting, a Japanese consulting agency, the days prior to the final blackout, they received a huge amount of requests to migrate processes that only worked with Explorer. According to Keyman’s Net, 49% of the Japanese companies still used Internet Explorer, and more than 20% among them still had no migrating plan prepared.
There's future in Microsoft
Knowing that Internet Explorer would come to an end and aware that they had a battle ahead for the market, at Microsoft they had started working for years on promoting their new browser Edge.
An effort and work that is bearing fruit by now and currently Edge is the second most used browser in the world, even ahead of others like Safari or Firefox. However the leader for this race is still Chrome.
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