For most computer owners, it was the gateway to the Internet - Microsoft's Explorer. But other browsers have long outstripped the veteran. Now the US group is finally pulling the plug on the program - and is applying for its own successor.
Internet Explorer is history: After 27 years, the US software giant Microsoft has officially stopped supporting the web browser. From now on there will be no more updates for the browser; whoever clicks on it will be redirected to Microsoft Edge, which is designed to replace Explorer.
"Internet Explorer (IE) is officially retired and will no longer receive support as of today," Microsoft said in a blog post. The internet has evolved and so have the web browsers available. "The incremental improvements to Internet Explorer didn't match the overall improvements across the web, so we started again."
The first version of Internet Explorer was released in 1995, and many people surfed the Internet with the Microsoft browser for the first time. However, for many Internet users, the relationship with Internet Explorer developed into a love-hate relationship: compared to other browsers, Explorer was considered slow and prone to technical problems.
While Internet Explorer still had a market share of 90 percent in the early 2000s, its success has continued to decline in recent years. According to the analysis website Statcounter, Google Chrome is the most used web browser today with a market share of almost 65 percent.
On Twitter, many users said goodbye to Internet Explorer in a humorous way. "You took a long time to download stuff, you kept freezing and got replaced by other browsers pretty easily," wrote one user under the hashtag
