Microsoft spent over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people involved in the project by 1999. Microsoft Edge, IE's successor, first overtook Internet Explorer in terms of market share in November 2019. On traditional PCs, the only platform on which it has ever had significant share, it is ranked 6th at 1.32%, after Opera. Its usage share has since declined with the launch of Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008), and with the growing popularity of mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS that do not support Internet Explorer.Įstimates for Internet Explorer's market share in 2021 are about 0.57% across all platforms, or by StatCounter's numbers ranked 9th. This came after Microsoft used bundling to win the first browser war against Netscape, which was the dominant browser in the 1990s. Internet Explorer was once the most widely used web browser, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share by 2003. Internet Explorer will be discontinued on June 15, 2022, after which, the alternative will be Microsoft Edge with IE mode for legacy sites. Microsoft 365 ended support for Internet Explorer on August 17, 2021, and Microsoft Teams ended support for IE on November 30, 2020. Since Internet Explorer is a Windows component and is included in long-term lifecycle versions of Windows such as Windows Server 2019, it will continue to receive security updates until at least 2029. New feature development for the browser was discontinued in 2016 in favor of new browser Microsoft Edge.

Later versions were available as free downloads, or in- service packs, and included in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a discontinued series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included in the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995.

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