Microsoft will no longer offer support for Internet Explorer starting today, marking the end of an era for the 26-year-old browser.
The company had planned already the discontinuation of its legacy browser for years. IE doesn’t work with the Microsoft Teams chat software since November 2020 and the Microsoft 365 apps (which includes Office) since August 2021.
Since 2015, Microsoft has given its Edge browser many features its aging IE browser has lacked. Microsoft Edge runs faster, supports current web technologies, and works on iOS and Android devices. Edge also supports IE mode for websites that can only be accessible with the legacy browser. Its support for IE mode will be available until 2029. Certain organizations still need and use IE.
Since Windows 95, IE has had many competitors such as Netscape Navigator, its first rival in the browser wars, which for a time was owned by AOL. Firefox (the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator) made its debut in 2004 to compete against the mighty IE. Google Chrome was released in 2008 and has become the leading browser. IE has also competed against Opera and Safari.
It now joins Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and other old technologies.
Though the browser will continue to work after today, Microsoft will eventually disable it permanently via Windows Update in the coming weeks or months.
Internet Explorer has played an important role since the early days of graphical browsers. Though it won’t be supported any longer, Windows 11 can still use Internet Explorer by clicking on the Help button in Control Panel’s Internet Options.


Thanks for everything, Internet Explorer.
[Source]: Microsoft: Internet Explorer 11 support ended – [Archive].