INTERNET Explorer is being killed off forever on Valentine’s Day.
Microsoft is preparing to shut down the beloved app that has powered internet users for nearly three decades.
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On February 14, Microsoft will release a software update that permanently disables Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 10.
It means users will be forced onto the newer Microsoft Edge, which is the official replacement for Internet Explorer.
“The IE11 desktop application is scheduled to be permanently disabled on February 14, 2023,” Microsoft explained.
“The change to use Microsoft Edge update to disable IE is intended to provide a better user experience and help organizations transition their last remaining IE11 users to Microsoft Edge.”
Bizarrely, Internet Explorer logos will be retained for a few months – disappearing in June this year.
So if you click on Internet Explorer in the meantime, you’ll just be taken to Microsoft Edge.
Internet Explorer simply won’t work after Valentine’s Day.
Of course, Microsoft’s slow sunsetting of Internet Explorer has been going on for a while.
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Microsoft stopped supporting the browser last year.
This means Internet Explorer no longer received any updates, making it potentially dangerous to use.
That’s because any security holes in the app would no longer be fixed.
So it was only a matter of time until Internet Explorer was killed off forever.
Internet Explorer was released way back in 1995 as an add-on package for Windows 95.
By 1999, it had more than 1,000 people working on it.
And it was once the most widely used web browser, with a 95% share of the market in 2003.
However rivals soon grew in popularity, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and later Apple Safari.
The rise of smartphones like iPhone and Android also reduced the demand for Internet Explorer, which wasn’t available on mobile.
Microsoft released its Internet Explorer successor Microsoft Edge in 2015, as part of Windows 10.
And Microsoft stopped developing new features for Internet Explorer in 2016.
Now Internet Explorer is finally disappearing for good.
Microsoft has now warned businesses that still depend on Internet Explorer to “take steps now…or risk business disruption at scale”.
