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Microsoft retiring Internet Explorer brand

Joe Rossignol

Joe Rossignol

Senior Reporter
Original poster
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Microsoft announced today that it's retiring the Internet Explorer brand on Windows 10 in favor of its new browser, tentatively named Project Spartan until Microsoft gives it a real name. Internet Explorer will remain available mostly for enterprise compatibility, but the end-user browser we remember using throughout the 1990s and 2000s is going away.

[The Verge]
 
Good riddance I say

Now if only we can get web sites to stop catering to IE
 
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Hmmm, I guess IE is a tainted brand, although it sounds like they're moving to a new code base too.

I haven't used IE for over 15 years...
 
I use IE version 8 at work because that is what we have to use. I don't expect us to be upgrading any time soon as my company tends to lag behind a good bit.
 
I've had the worst browser experiences with Explorer, only using it when there is no other option.
 
I remember back in the early versions of OS X when Internet Explorer was on it, and I remember it, ironically, being more user friendly than the Windows version
 
Can't say I blame them, given the stigma around the brand.

I still pretty regularly use IE 5 in OS 9, but only long enough to download Classilla. Of course, it's hard to really draw a conclusion on a 15-year old version of the browser, as it can no longer even render pages correctly(newer but outdated versions of Safari, Mozilla, and others have the same problem today), but it was still crummy back then next to something like Netscape.
 
Don't blame them. Despite IE being excellent in the last few versions, the name itself reminds people of the IE 5/6/7 days which were not good one bit.
 
I think it is for the best that they retire it as it is a tarnished brand. That said, we will be still dealing with IE for some time due to a lot of organisations being stuck with it.
 
I bet it's just a re-branding of the next iteration of Explorer.

Call it something different and people might use it 😀.
 
It'll be VERY interesting to see if Microsoft will allow a different brand of web browser to totally integrate into Windows 10. I would not be surprised in the retail version of Windows 10, every new user upon the first startup of Windows 10 will get a browser ballot to choose which web browser gets the tight integration into Windows 10 itself--I think many will choose Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
 
I largely don't use IE when I'm on a windows machine. For work, its the standard browser, but for everything else, I use Chrome.
 
SactoGuy18 said:
It'll be VERY interesting to see if Microsoft will allow a different brand of web browser to totally integrate into Windows 10. I would not be surprised in the retail version of Windows 10, every new user upon the first startup of Windows 10 will get a browser ballot to choose which web browser gets the tight integration into Windows 10 itself--I think many will choose Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
Click to expand...

I got a strong sense of Deja vu reading that. Weren't Microsoft actually forced by law to do something similar in Europe or somewhere because of their monopoly on browsers at some point in time? Sounds too specific for me to have imagined it.
 
roadbloc said:
Don't blame them. Despite IE being excellent in the last few versions, the name itself reminds people of the IE 5/6/7 days which were not good one bit.
Click to expand...

Yeah. The last few versions of IE have been solid. Not great, mind you, but solid, and surprisingly speedy. Thing is, MS has done so much damage with the previous versions of IE, that they could've made the greatest browser the world has ever seen, and no one would use it just because of it shares the same name with the terror, the horror, and the dread that came before.

I think this is a pretty good move. They're stripping all the bad things out of the old version of IE, expanding upon the good, and calling it something else entirely.

Now all we have to worry about are all the old people screaming "WHAR'S THE BIG BLUE E I USE TO GET ON THE INTERWABS WITH".
 
Microsoft tried to make "the internet" solely compatible with IE, back in the nineties and early two thousands.
They tried to kick Netscape Navigator by forcing every Windows user to use IE, and tried to use web sever - client communication and application techniques like ActiveX.
They even made sure that their only true desktop competitor (Mac OS X) had Internet Explorer as the default browser. (the browser of choice! 🙄)

They came very close!

IMHO, there are just two reasons for them not completing that objective:
1. Firefox
2. iOS

FireFox came and grabbed the desktop market by storm, giving Windows, OS X and Linux users the true meaning of "OS independent".
This gave more web site developers less reason to use IE - only stuff like ActiveX and "the internet" became more and more OS independent.
iOS gave us "mobile internet", hugely leaning on Safari.

These two forces meant users of different platforms could use all web sites on most browsers.
That is what I call "choice" 😎

It looks like Microsoft is really being different (thinking different..) now. Office 365 online and multiplatform, and moving away from that stained name "Internet Explorer".
NeXT up: Windows 10. And no more "big upgrades"....
 
MacsRgr8, while Firefox was the first truly viable alternative to Internet Explorer for Windows, it eventually lost its lead to an even better web browser: Google Chrome. Chrome's superior speed, stability and HTML 5.0 compliance made it very popular--indeed, this is my default web browser.
 
What's odd is that they're using a branding that is so similar to IE, that the logo looks like IE. Personally, I would have loved to see them keep the spartan name
 
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