On the day of "520" in 2021, Microsoft announced that it would completely stop IE browser on June 15, 2022. Towards the end, the official wechat of Microsoft edge browser also recently issued a notice that IE will see us again soon. The road that IE has traveled will be continued by edge browser.
Ie is not the tears of the times. It once dominated the world at the turn of the century and unified the browser market. As time goes by, IE browser has changed from the preferred browser of many people to the best "Chrome downloader".
Mencius said that he was born in sorrow and died in happiness. The development process of IE is basically the same. Its birth is like the palace duel drama in the Internet era. However, after intrigue and kingly journey, ie finally entered "bad end".
IE and the birth of Netscape
The world's first browser was born in 1990 in the form of command line. Although computers and the Internet were far from universal at that time, graphical interfaces were necessary to allow more people to access the Internet. In 1993, Mark Anderson and Eric bina, two programmers of the national supercomputer Application Center (NCSA), designed mosaic browser, which means mosaic. It is one of the earliest browsers with graphical interface.
Mosaic is the "emperor Amar" in this play
Through the form of commercial authorization, mosaic has derived a variety of browsers. One of them is Spyglass. The company's spyglass mosiac browser is a direct relative of IE. In 1994, Microsoft purchased the license of Spyglass mosaic for redesign. In 1995, Internet Explorer was born.
One of the main characters created by Mark Anderson is the founder of Netscape, which can be said to be one of the Chinese characters of Netscape. In 1994, Netscape launched Netscape Navigator browser, which is called Netscape browser here.
Between IE and Netscape, a protracted open and secret struggle began
IE's road to hegemony
Initially, Netscape followed the voice of the Internet age and announced that Netscape browser was free for non-commercial purposes. This makes Netscape echo everywhere and take the lead in the Internet era, Apple My Mac also chose Netscape as the default browser.
Of course, ie is Microsoft's own son after all, with strong strength. In 1995, Windows 95 was released, integrating IE browser as the default browser. With the hot sale of 40 million copies of Windows 95 in the first year, ie began to catch up with Netscape.
The wisdom of Microsoft's move is not just binding Windows 95 system needs to be purchased for a fee, but the pre installed IE browser is a free gift. The direct sales revenue from IE is regarded as zero, and Microsoft only needs to pay the minimum licensing fee to Spyglass without dividend. Spyglass couldn't bear to come up with a contract to threaten Microsoft. Microsoft just lost $8 million in "comfort fee" and calmed down.
Looking back to the big play, there was a small episode in the middle. In 1997, when ie 4 was released, Microsoft set up the "e" logo symbolizing ie at the release site in San Francisco, with the attached text "from IE team... We love you". The next day, the logo was pushed down by Netscape staff and replaced with its own mascot "Mozilla" dinosaur statue, plus the market share comparison between Netscape and IE - 72 to 18.
This is a microcosm of the browser battlefield at that time.
Graph self network
But it was at the beginning of IE 4 that Microsoft "went crazy". By the eve of the release of IE 5 in 1999, ie had basically been on a par with Netscape.
The wealthy Microsoft finally won the first browser battle. The volume of Netscape is too small, and its income basically depends on the product of Netscape browser, which has lost this "protracted war". In 1999, Netscape sold to AOL for $42, with Microsoft and Internet Explorer dominating the world.
The world belongs to chrome
After Netscape fell, no one in the world can compete with ie. The popularity of windows makes IE's market share exceed 90%.
Under the absolute leading edge, ie's innovation slowed down and its accumulated risks began to explode Users find that IE is becoming slower and slower, more and more card, and the security problem is becoming more and more obvious. Once the most advanced browser in the world, it still can't stand such a work by Microsoft.
The browser battlefield is once again in full swing. Mozilla, the spiritual successor of Netscape, launched the Phoenix browser in 2002 and later changed its name to Firefox. Apple built Safari and mastered the power of Mac's default browser. Google, which stood idly by in the first browser war, became a blockbuster and launched Chrome browser based on the open source chromium project.
Everything is like a frog boiled in warm water. Ie, which flourishes and declines, finally becomes a Doo that Microsoft can't help In 201, Microsoft couldn't sit still after all, and launched edge browser with windows 10; Later, Microsoft replaced the edge browser kernel with the chromium kernel of the same version of chrome, ending its own browser kernel history since ie 4.
It is worth mentioning that after Microsoft switched to chromium, Kenneth auchenberg, Microsoft Project Manager working for the code team, even shouted that it was time for Mozilla to give up its Firefox gecko engine, and the web world has been ruled by chromium.
Happy here, not thinking of Shu?
In short, ie's historical mission is over. Except for some websites that have not been updated for ten thousand years, most websites are no longer required to cooperate with ie. For those websites that only recognize ie, Microsoft's new edge browser provides ie compatibility mode as a solution. The IE that cannot be opened directly in the windows 11 system directory serves this purpose.
Not many people will miss Internet Explorer. Perhaps what we miss is the Internet era when ie began to touch.