For those of you not in the know – Microsoft recently announced that they will be ending support for older versions of Internet Explorer (8, 9, and 10). IE 11 will still be supported, as well as Edge which is actually pretty good, but I’m too much of a Google user to give up Chrome. Last year, I upgraded to Windows 10 and used Edge for the first time – to download Chrome. And I haven’t used it since. But my experience with Edge wasn’t bad – it didn’t stop me from downloading Chrome. That would’ve been funny/annoying.
Anyway, for most people, this won’t mean a thing – and to people who are still on those old versions of IE, it probably won’t mean a thing to them either since they haven’t bothered to upgrade till now. I doubt any modern businesses are still running on those browsers either, so it’s not as big of a deal as its been made out to be.
I haven’t used Internet Explorer in a long time. I remembered it used to be the go to browser way back when Netscape was still a thing. I was on Netscape Navigator 3 or 4, I can’t remember, when there was a talk in school and they handed us CDs with IE on them. I remember getting all excited and pumped, installing a brand new web browser on my home computer (via a CD-ROM!). I think it was on that day I signed up for my Hotmail account as well (which remains active till this day).
IE was faster than Netscape (believe it or not). It was my browser of choice for the longest time. I can’t remember when or what it was that made me switch back to Netscape. I think I used Opera for a while, and then Firefox for a few years until Chrome came along.
I remember reading the newspapers at the time – Microsoft was labelled unfair and was using its position as the no.1 operating system provider to spread Internet Explorer by bundling the browser with Windows. Microsoft had to face antitrust lawsuits and shit. While Windows is still popular, IE isn’t anymore (though it’s probably still one of the most used browsers worldwide) and Windows Phone is barely staying afloat (correct me if I’m wrong). Oh how times have changed.
Anyway, I think Microsoft will probably kill of Internet Explorer 11 once they’ve developed Edge enough. I don’t see any reason why they would want to continue working on two browsers unless they both have very different uses.
But for all the years of surfing IE has enabled me to partake in – thank you. Welcome to browser heaven.