Microsoft took advantage of Valentine’s Day to put an end to its long love affair with Internet Explorer, its old Internet browser which was replaced by Edge a few years ago.
While some received flowers or chocolates for Valentine’s Day, Internet Explorer was the collateral victim of an update to Microsoft Edge. Microsoft officially ended Internet Explorer in June last year, replacing it with Microsoft Edge, with official withdrawal of support for Internet Explorer 11.
Microsoft started moving away from Internet Explorer in 2015, when the company started working on a new browser codenamed “Spartan”, in reference to its famous game hero Halo. This project eventually arrived as “Edge”, a much more modern browser based on Chromium, ensuring compatibility with thousands of plugins.
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Internet Explorer is dead, it’s official
Microsoft has permanently deactivate your browser with an update to Microsoft Edge, rather than by updating Windows itself. However, the company notes that this only applies to ” some versions of Windows 10 “. Among them are Windows 10 client SKUs, Windows 10 IoT and Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-Session.
A few versions of the operating system were presumably spared by the update, including Windows 8.1, Windows 7 Extended Security Updates, Windows Server SAC, Windows 10 IoT Long Term Service Channel (LTSC), Windows Server LTSC, Windows 10 Client LTSC, and Windows 10 China Government Edition.
The final departure of Internet Explorer should not upset the habits of a good part of Internet users, but some will still be impacted by this change. Internet Explorer still holds a market share of 2.15%, according to data from Kinsta. The end of IE is therefore ultimately quite symbolic, especially since Microsoft has been trying to promote Edge for a few years now. Incidentally, the browser recently received a major update, as Microsoft added a modified version of ChatGPT in Edge.
