Internet Explorer is Microsoft's first venture into the web browser market. The initial version of the browser was incarnated from Spyglass Mosaic which Microsoft licensed for a modest quarterly fee and a share of the non-Windows product revenues. As Microsoft decided to distribute Internet Explorer "free of charge" with their Windows operating system, they were able to avoid most royalties.
Because of the browser's inclusion starting from the Windows 9x series and beyond, it sparked a three-year-long antitrust lawsuit that lasted until November 2001. The browser quickly overtook Netscape in the first browser war and retained ~95% of its market share until the early 2000s, when popular alternative browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome came to market, sparking the second browser war.
Internet Explorer was notorious for disobeying set web standards by the W3C until version 9, when Microsoft took a new commitment to HTML5 and web standards. It was eventually replaced by Microsoft Edge in 2015.
End-of-Life
On 17 August 2020, Microsoft announced that Microsoft 365 apps will no longer support Internet Explorer starting on 30 November 2020 with the Microsoft Teams Web App, followed by all other 365 apps on 17 August 2021.
Microsoft is set to discontinue Internet Explorer on 15 June 2024.[1] As of Windows 10 build 21387, the browser's functionality has been disabled and attempting to open its executable will instead redirect the user to Microsoft Edge, though it is still possible to run Internet Explorer if ieframe.dll
is replaced with a copy from older builds.
Versions
Version | Release date | Included in | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1.0 | 1995 | Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 | First version to be released publicly |
1.5 | 1996 | Internediate release for Windows 3.1x and Windows NT 3.51 to bridge the gap between IE 1 and 2 | |
2.0 | 1995 | Windows 95 OSR1 Windows NT 4.0 Nashville (alpha) |
|
2.1 | 1996 | Internediate release for Windows 3.1x and Windows NT 3.51 to bridge the gap between IE 2 and 3 | |
3.0 | 1996 | Windows 95 OSR2 (3.0) Windows 95 OSR2.1 (3.02) |
|
4.0 | 1997 | Windows 95 OSR2.5 (4.0) Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (4.01, optional) Windows 98 (4.01 SP1) Windows 98 SP1 (4.01 SP2) |
|
4.5 | 1999 | For Mac OS | |
5.0 | 1999 | Windows 98 SE (5.0) Windows 2000 (5.01) Neptune (5.01 pre-RTM, mixed with 5.5 beta) |
|
5.1 | 2000 | Last version for classic Mac OS | |
5.2 | 2001 | Only version for Mac OS X | |
5.5 | 2000 | Windows Me |
|
6 | 2001 | Windows XP Windows Server 2003 |
|
7 | 2006 | Windows Vista Windows Server 2008 |
|
8 | 2009 | Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 R2 |
|
9 | 2011 |
| |
10 | 2012 | Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 |
First Metro-based version for Windows 8 |
11 | 2013 | Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows 10 Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2022 |
|
12 | 2022 | Windows 11 Windows Server 2022 |
|
- ↑ Windows Experience Blog. The future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge, 19 May 2021.