Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, and shortly known IE or MSIE) is a deprecated series of graphical web browsers created by Microsoft included in the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. Internet Explorer is no longer supported by the Microsoft Corporation. It was initially made available as part of the Plus! add-on package for Windows 95 in the same year. Following Windows 95, following versions of Windows were available as free downloads or in-service packs, and were also included in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and subsequent versions of Windows. As a result, new feature development for the browser was suspended in 2016 to make way for the new Microsoft Edge browser. It will continue to get security updates until at least 2029 since Internet Explorer is a Windows component and is included in long-term lifecycle versions of Windows, such as Windows Server 2019. On August 17, 2021, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams will no longer support Internet Explorer, and on November 30, 2020, Microsoft Teams will no longer support Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer will be phased out on June 15, 2022, and the replacement will be Microsoft Edge, which will have an IE mode for legacy sites, among other features.
Internet Explorer used to be the most commonly used web browser, reaching a high of about 95 percent use share by 2003, according to statistics. Microsoft utilised bundling to defeat Netscape, which was the dominant browser throughout the 1990s, in the first browser war, and it did it again in the second. Since then, with the introduction of browsers such as Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008), as well as the increasing popularity of mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS, which do not support Internet Explorer, its market share has decreased.
According to StatCounter's estimates, Internet Explorer will have a market share of about 0.57 percent across all platforms in 2021, placing it ninth overall. When it comes to conventional PCs, the only platform on which it has ever had a substantial share, it is placed 6th, with 1.32 percent of the market, just behind Opera. In November of this year, Microsoft Edge, the successor to Internet Explorer, became the first browser to surpass it in terms of market share.
At its peak in the late 1990s, Microsoft was spending more than $100 million per year on Internet Explorer, with more than 1,000 employees working on the project by 1999.