Internet Explorer was once synonymous with the Internet, but today it’s gone for good

Over the years, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has killed many people. Internet Explorer 11 will no longer receive support or security updates starting today, and will eventually be removed from Windows 10 PCs via a Windows Update in the future. It was not installed on any of the PCs.

People who open Internet Explorer over the next few months will be directed to Microsoft Edge, which will allow them to import bookmarks and save passwords. Microsoft will continue to offer Internet Explorer in Microsoft Edge until at least 2029. Older websites that don't render correctly in newer browsers can still work with IE mode, which combines the user interface of Edge with IE11.

It was the end of the line for Internet Explorer, a browser that dominated the late '90s browser wars only to be wiped out in the early 2010s. We've put together a brief history of the life and times of internet explorer for those who weren't there. The entire story of IE is worth knowing even though it is a distant memory. The browser wars have been going on for a long time, but that didn't happen overnight.

From Mosaic clone to world-devourer

The earliest graphical web browser is NCSA Mosaic. It was preceded by a number of projects, including Tim Berners-Lee'sNexus project, which is generally acknowledged as the first browser, and Cello, which preceded Mosaic on Windows PCs. In the early '90s, the ability to combine images and text on the same page was a major advancement.

Competitors were inspired by mosaic. Many of the people who created Netscape had previously worked on Mosaic. OtherTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia The internet explorer was one of the other ones.

The original version of Mosaic was licensed by Microsoft in order to unify its disparate codebases and make the browser support the same features on all supported platforms. Microsoft was just one of the companies that licensed the Spyglass version of Mosaic; the companies hoped to jump into the browser market quickly by putting their name on an existing browser.

IE ran on Windows 95, NT, and 3.1, as well as 68K and PowerPC, when version 3.0 rolled around in 1996, and they were mainly playing catch-up with Netscape. Microsoft used its increasing dominance of the PC world to push its other products, including IE, as Windows 95 took over the computing world.

The browser's integration into the rest of the operating system was a double-edged sword. IE took a huge bite out of Netscape's share due to being available on most Windows 95-era PCs. The settlement with Spyglass and the landmark antitrust case brought by the US government drew intense legal scrutiny.

It is hard to imagine how much Windows was used in the late '90s. The Mac was beloved by the crazy ones, but it was at its nadir in terms of market reach. OS/2 and BeOS were the first Windows competitors to be defeated. We were used to distributions that were user-friendly. Business Dads, the guys who learn valuable lessons about putting their family ahead of their work in '90s movies, use Palm Pilots, AppleNewtons, and Pocket PCs.