Internet Explorer

~ the eulogy ~

internet explorer 1.0 shipped on 16 august 1995 as part of the windows 95 plus pack, an optional extra for windows 95. by IE 4 in 1997 it was free and bundled with windows itself. that bundling killed netscape over five years (see the netscape grave for the other side of that story).

IE peaked around 2002-2003 with about 95 percent global browser market share. that monopoly lasted until firefox launched in 2004 and slowly chipped away. chrome shipped in 2008 and accelerated the chipping. by 2015 microsoft had given up on IE as a strategic product and announced microsoft edge as its replacement. the IE codebase kept getting security patches for another seven years for legacy enterprise customers.

the consumer end-of-life was 15 june 2022. some enterprise installations still have it running in compatibility mode in 2026, but for normal users it is gone. for web developers, the relief is real and ongoing.

~ the dossier ~

~ how it killed netscape ~

internet explorer was bundled with windows starting from windows 95 plus pack and became fully integrated by IE 4 in 1997. you did not have to install it. it was just there. netscape required a download. that gap was enormous in the dial-up era. downloading a browser was a real time investment. clicking the IE icon already on your desktop was free.

microsoft also paid major ISPs and computer manufacturers to include IE as the default browser on new machines. AOL, the largest ISP in the US, bundled IE despite owning netscape. the result was that for most casual users, IE was the browser. they did not even know netscape existed.

this was the strategy that triggered the US v Microsoft antitrust case. microsoft was eventually found to have engaged in anticompetitive practices. the company was almost broken up. they settled instead. the IE bundling became somewhat constrained but the damage to netscape was done.

~ the IE6 era ~

internet explorer 6 shipped in august 2001 with windows XP. it was the dominant browser for about five years. it was also actively developed for almost none of those years. microsoft, having won the browser war, stopped meaningfully updating IE between 2001 and 2006. IE6 was the de facto web browser of about a billion people, frozen in 2001.

this was disastrous for the open web. css and javascript and html had moved on. IE6 had bugs that web developers had to work around constantly. famous IE6 bugs:

• the box model was wrong (padding was inside width, not outside)
• png files with alpha channels did not render correctly
• position: fixed did not work
• display: inline-block barely worked
• conditional comments were the only way to ship IE-specific css

web developers spent years writing workarounds. there were entire libraries devoted to making modern web features work in IE6. designers had to design pages that would degrade gracefully. the productivity loss across the industry, in aggregate, was probably equivalent to billions of dollars.

~ the slow decline ~

firefox launched in 2004 and grew steadily. by 2008 firefox had about 20 percent global market share. chrome launched in 2008 and was faster, simpler, and integrated with google services. chrome ate firefox's gains and IE's share at the same time. by 2012 chrome was the dominant browser globally.

microsoft kept shipping new IE versions (7, 8, 9, 10, 11) but each one started further behind than the last. IE 10 and 11 were technically decent browsers, but the brand was poisoned. web developers actively warned each other against testing in IE. memes about IE being slow were everywhere. the IE icon became visual shorthand for "old technology."

in 2015 microsoft announced edge, a brand new browser built on a new rendering engine, as the default for windows 10. edge later switched to chromium (the open-source base of chrome) in 2020. that means modern microsoft edge is technically a chrome derivative, not an IE descendant. the IE rendering engine (trident) is gone.

~ the curtain ~

microsoft announced the end of internet explorer support in may 2021. the consumer end-of-life was 15 june 2022. on that date the IE browser stopped opening on most windows installations. IE mode in microsoft edge still works for legacy enterprise applications that depended on IE-specific behavior. some korean banks still need it.

when the shutdown date arrived in june 2022, web developers across the world celebrated. there were articles. there were memes. there were jokes about throwing parties. the relief was widespread and genuine. nobody was sad except enterprise IT teams who still had to support IE mode for old internal systems.

~ what it left ~

the css workarounds. an entire generation of web developers learned to write css that handled IE bugs by default. some of those workarounds are still in production code, doing nothing now that IE is gone, because nobody has had time to clean them up. the IE technical debt across the world's websites is real and persistent.

the antitrust precedent. US v Microsoft set the legal framework for how courts would think about platform-tied bundling. that framework has been cited in every subsequent antitrust case against tech companies, including google, apple, and amazon.

the lesson about complacency. microsoft's decision to stop investing in IE between 2001 and 2006 shows what happens when a tech company stops developing a product because they have already won the market. when firefox and chrome arrived, microsoft did not have the engineering depth to compete. by the time they recovered, the market had moved. the lesson is that monopolies do not let you stop shipping. they let you keep your lead, briefly, while you ignore the threats forming.

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