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SS-009 Web browser · Microsoft 2022

Internet Explorer — It Won the Web, Then Became the Browser You Used to Download Another One

outcompeteddiscontinued2020s
Lifespan
1995–2022 · 27 yrs
Peak Users
~95% of web users (2002–03)
Killed By
Chrome / its own stagnation
Status
Discontinued

Summary

Internet Explorer was the browser that conquered the web and then spent a decade as the punchline of it, and on June 15, 2022 Microsoft retired the IE11 desktop application for good. Launched in August 1995 as part of the Microsoft Plus! pack for Windows 95, IE rode the most powerful distribution advantage in computing history — it came bundled with Windows, the operating system on nearly every PC on earth — to crush Netscape in the first browser war. By 2002 and 2003 it held roughly 95 percent of the market, a dominance so total it became the subject of a landmark U.S. antitrust case over exactly that bundling.

Then, having won, Microsoft stopped trying. With Netscape vanquished, IE6 — released in August 2001 — was left to ossify for years, becoming a byword for security holes and broken web standards that web developers cursed and corporate IT departments could not escape. While IE stood still, the web moved: Firefox arrived in 2004 with tabs and standards compliance, and Google's Chrome, launched in 2008, was faster and cleaner. In May 2012, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the most-used browser in the world. IE's share collapsed, and the program acquired its enduring second career — the thing you opened once on a new PC to go download Chrome or Firefox, and then never touched again.

Microsoft eventually accepted the defeat it had inflicted on itself. It replaced IE with Microsoft Edge in 2015, and on June 15, 2022, after more than 25 years, the IE11 desktop application officially retired and went out of support, progressively redirecting to Edge. Legacy compatibility was preserved through "IE mode" inside Edge, which Microsoft committed to supporting through at least 2029 — a tacit admission that decades of intranets and enterprise apps had been built to IE's idiosyncrasies and could not simply be abandoned.

What IE leaves behind is the canonical story of how a monopoly rots. It did not lose because it ran out of users or money; it lost because, once unchallenged, it quit innovating, accumulated a mountain of security and standards debt, and watched faster rivals dismantle a position that had looked permanent. The browser that once was the internet for most people ended as a compatibility shim and a meme.

Timeline

August 1995
Launch
Internet Explorer 1 ships as part of the Microsoft Plus! pack for Windows 95, Microsoft's late entry into the browser race against Netscape Navigator.
1997–1998
The bundle bites
IE is integrated tightly into Windows and given away free; tied to the dominant OS, it begins eroding Netscape's lead.
1998
Antitrust
The U.S. government sues Microsoft, with the integration of IE into Windows central to the case over monopoly abuse.
August 24, 2001
IE6
Internet Explorer 6 ships and quickly dominates — then stagnates, becoming notorious for security vulnerabilities and non-standard rendering.
2002–2003
The peak
IE reaches roughly 95 percent of the browser market, about as close to total as a contested product gets.
2004
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox launches with tabbed browsing and standards compliance, the first credible challenger to a complacent IE.
September 2008
Chrome
Google launches Chrome — fast, minimal, frequently updated — and begins eating IE's lunch in earnest.
May 2012
Dethroned
Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer as the most-used browser worldwide; IE's long decline becomes a freefall.
2015
Edge replaces it
Microsoft ships Windows 10 with a new default browser, Microsoft Edge, signaling IE's relegation to legacy duty.
June 15, 2022
Retirement
After 25+ years, the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application is officially retired and out of support, redirecting users to Edge.
February 14, 2023
Permanently disabled
The out-of-support IE11 desktop app is permanently disabled via a Microsoft Edge update on affected Windows 10 versions.
Through 2029
The ghost in Edge
"IE mode" lives on inside Edge for legacy sites, with Microsoft committed to supporting it through at least 2029.

The Browser That Bundled Its Way to a Monopoly

Internet Explorer arrived late and behind. Netscape Navigator had defined the consumer web, and IE1 in 1995 was an unremarkable catch-up product. What changed everything was not the software but the strategy: Microsoft made IE free and welded it into Windows itself, so that every new PC — and in the late 1990s that was almost every PC — shipped with Internet Explorer already installed and pushed to the foreground. Against a browser most people had to seek out and, for a time, pay for, a free one already sitting on the desktop was nearly unbeatable. Netscape's share cratered, and by the turn of the century the first browser war was over.

That same bundling made IE a legal target. The U.S. antitrust suit filed in 1998 turned on whether tying the browser to the operating system was an abuse of Microsoft's Windows monopoly, and the case dragged through years of remedies and appeals. The episode is the clearest demonstration of IE's core truth: its dominance was a function of distribution, not merit. It won because it was everywhere by default, which is a brilliant way to acquire a monopoly and a terrible foundation for keeping one, because it teaches a company that it can stop competing on the product.

By 2002 and 2003, IE held around 95 percent of all web users. There was, effectively, no browser market left to fight over — and Microsoft drew exactly the wrong lesson from that.

A Decade Standing Still

With Netscape dead, Microsoft largely stopped developing Internet Explorer. IE6, shipped in 2001, was left to sit as the dominant browser for years with little meaningful improvement, and that stasis curdled into one of the most expensive technical legacies in software history. IE6 became infamous on two fronts. For security, it was a chronic liability — a sprawling, deeply integrated attack surface that bred a steady stream of exploits and made "patch IE" a permanent chore for the world's IT departments. For developers, it was a nightmare of non-standard behavior, forcing the entire web to write special-case hacks just to render correctly in the browser most people were stuck with.

The stagnation was self-inflicted and strategic: a monopolist with no competitor has little incentive to invest in the product, and Microsoft's energy went elsewhere. But the web did not stand still while IE did. Firefox in 2004 reintroduced what a browser could be — tabs, extensions, respect for standards — and won over the technical users who set the trends. Then Chrome in 2008 weaponized speed and a relentless auto-update cadence, shipping improvements every few weeks while IE lumbered on multi-year release cycles tied to Windows.

This is the mechanism that kills incumbents: switching costs that looked insurmountable simply evaporated. A browser is, for most purposes, trivially replaceable — you download a better one in two minutes — so the moment rivals were clearly better, IE's vast installed base offered almost no protection. In May 2012, Chrome passed IE worldwide. The 95 percent monopoly had been spent, not on building a moat, but on the assumption that it would not need one.

From the Internet to a Punchline

By the 2010s, Internet Explorer's role had inverted with grim irony. The browser that had once been synonymous with the web survived mainly as the tool people used exactly once on a fresh Windows install — to navigate to Google and download Chrome or Firefox — before being ignored forever. Its slow performance and lingering reputation made it the internet's favorite self-deprecating joke, and Microsoft, to its eventual credit, leaned into the obituary rather than fighting it.

The formal end came in stages. Microsoft introduced Edge as the Windows 10 default in 2015, ceding that IE's brand was beyond rehabilitation. Then on June 15, 2022, after more than a quarter-century, the IE11 desktop application was retired and put out of support, with users progressively redirected to Edge and the program scheduled to be permanently disabled in early 2023. The death was a discontinuation, not a sudden blackout: IE was not so much switched off as quietly escorted into a successor's compatibility layer.

That layer is itself the most telling artifact of IE's reign. Microsoft could not simply delete the browser, because decades of corporate intranets, government portals, and line-of-business applications had been built specifically for IE's quirks. So Edge ships with "IE mode," an embedded rendering of the old engine that Microsoft has pledged to support through at least 2029. Internet Explorer is dead as a product you choose, and lives on only as a ghost the world cannot yet afford to exorcise — the long tail of a monopoly's standards debt, still being paid down years after the browser itself was buried.

The Five Factors

01
Distribution wins the war but cannot win the peace
IE conquered the web by being bundled with Windows, not by being the best browser, which made its dominance enormous and brittle at once. A position built on default placement collapses the moment a rival is good enough to make users override the default — and for a free, easily-swapped product, that bar is low.
02
Monopoly breeds stagnation
Once Netscape was gone, Microsoft had no competitive reason to improve IE, so it didn't, leaving IE6 frozen for years. The absence of a rival removes the very pressure that keeps a product alive; the prize for winning a market outright is often the temptation to stop developing.
03
Security and standards debt compounds
Years of neglect turned IE into a chronic security liability and a developer's curse, debt that made it both dangerous to use and painful to support. Technical debt deferred during the good years comes due all at once when the product can no longer be ignored.
04
Switching costs that look permanent can evaporate
A browser is replaced in minutes, so IE's vast installed base was no moat once Firefox and Chrome were clearly better. Incumbents mistake a large user base for loyalty; when the cost of leaving is trivial, scale protects nothing.
05
A long tail of dependency outlives the product
IE had to live on as Edge's "IE mode" because the world had built decades of intranets and apps to its quirks. Dominant platforms create dependencies that survive their own death, forcing successors to carry the corpse forward for years.

Aftermath

For ordinary users, IE's death was a non-event they had already lived through — most had migrated to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge years before 2022, and the formal retirement merely closed a door almost everyone had stopped using. Microsoft's own Edge, rebuilt on Google's Chromium engine in 2020, inherited the default-browser slot, while Chrome remained the runaway market leader the whole episode had crowned. The retirement was less a loss than a long-overdue burial.

The lasting mark is the cautionary tale itself. Internet Explorer is the standard case study in how monopolies decay from the inside: not bankruptcy, not a single fatal misstep, but the slow rot of a company that, having eliminated competition, stopped competing — and then accumulated the security and standards debt that made it indefensible. Web standards bodies, antitrust regulators, and a generation of developers all carry IE6 as a reference point for what unchecked dominance produces. And IE mode in Edge ensures the browser's quirks will be quietly rendered through at least 2029, a corpse kept warm by the very enterprises that once had no choice but to build on it. The browser that won the web ended as its longest-running object lesson.

Lessons

  1. Winning a market by default is not the same as earning loyalty — distribution advantages collapse the instant a competitor is good enough to make switching worth two minutes.
  2. A monopoly is the most dangerous time to stop innovating; the absence of a rival removes the only force that keeps an incumbent sharp.
  3. Technical debt is a deferred bill, not a saving — years of unpatched security and ignored standards come due all at once and can make a product impossible to defend.
  4. Never confuse a huge installed base with a moat; when switching costs are low, scale buys you nothing but a longer fall.
  5. Dominant platforms create dependencies that outlive them — plan for the day your defaults change, because the legacy you leave behind will have to be carried by whatever comes next.

References