It’s official: After 20 years, Microsoft is killing off Internet Explorer. The reason? After all these years, it’s still the stench of IE 6:
We’ve known for months now that Microsoft was working on a new browser currently named Project Spartan for Windows 10, but it always appeared as though the company planned to keep Internet Explorer front and center. But the negative connotations with the name were just too much — Microsoft is finally giving up on IE.
Many Windows users associate Internet Explorer with terrible performance and badly rendered websites, but that hasn’t actually been the case for a long time. The most recent iterations of the browser have worked well enough, yet the legacy of the monstrosity that was Internet Explorer 6 loomed large over them. Even Microsoft took shots at the browser in ads for later versions, but that wasn’t enough to remove the stigma.
Microsoft got into antitrust trouble with the Clinton Justice Department merely for bundling Internet Explorer 3 with Windows, and for sticking it on the desktop. But free market forces but Microsoft (and IE) in its proper place, and not some wrongheaded lawsuit waged by overzealous prosecutors.
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