TECHNOLOGY

Farewell to Internet Explorer: Microsoft's historic browser closes for good

February 14, 2023, was in its own way a historic day for Microsoft: after almost 20 years of honored service, the company from Redmond closed for good Internet Explorer, the broswer that for a decade was the most widely used in the world.

Active since 1995 on the historic Window95 with version 1, it was the protagonist of two "wars of broswer", losing pro the last battle especially with Mozilla Firefox, a much more modern multiplatform.

With no more updates as of June 2022, from now on those who click on the Explorer icon will be sent back to a page of Microsoft Edge, the current default broswer on Microsoft.

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February 14, 2023: dies Internet Explorer
It has been a beautiful journey, but like every journey comes the end: after nearly 28 years of honored service, Microsoft has decided to close Internet Explorer.
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The statement from Microsoft
The Redmond company also issued a statement announcing the shutdown of browser, which has reached version number 11: "All remaining devices that have not already been redirected from Internet Explorer 11 to Microsoft Edge should be redirected with the Microsoft Edge update scheduled for Feb. 14, 2023. The change to use the Microsoft Edge update to disable IE is intended to provide a better user experience and help organizations transfer the last remaining IE11 users to Microsoft Edge. As a reminder, IE11 is no longer supported as of June 15, 2022."
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The "Browser war"
The first "browser war" was between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, predecessor to IE and then a near monopolist in the market. The decisive move by Microsoft was to install Explorer in every computer that mounted Window95: thus changing it became a task for users, who in most cases did not do so. IE lost the second, however, to software such as Firefox, Opera and Safari. Its share of users gradually declined until it was abandoned altogether.
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Why Internet Explorer was closed
IE is being shut down according to a logic shared by all software companies in the world: for software house cannot keep support for all their products active, forever, because it would cost too much. Moreover, IE has long since been abandoned by users first, so it is a strategically sensible move. The end of a real era for all early Internet users.
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Will it still be possible to use Internet Explorer?
Some corporate sites still run today only on IE, will it be possible to continue? The answer is yes. All such people, who have this need, can continue to use IE 11 in emulation, within Microsoft Edge, thanks to IE mode, that is, the mode created specifically for such cases.
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