Internet Explorer was released 21 years ago

Twenty-one years ago, one of the most controversial browsers in history, Microsoft Internet Explorer or simply IE, was released. For some, it was the main browser for many years, someone immediately used alternatives in the form of Opera and Firefox, as soon as they appeared, someone one of its versions, IE6, still dreams in the worst nightmares (hello to typesetters).

With all the minuses of the brainchild of Microsoft, which are now noticeable, he was once the "King of the Mountain", and for good reason. However, unlike so successfully appeared and immediately occupied its niche Windows, the second most popular product of Microsoft had to fight for a place under the sun. The first time he won, the second time he lost.

One morning, Bill Gates woke up and saw that his prediction about the lack of future of mass access to the Internet did not come true, and he missed the next revolution. At that time, Microsoft made its bid for an interim solution in the form of an MSN shell for network activity among Windows users, since, according to management, the “Internet in every home in the USA” will not come soon. But as it turned out, he came earlier than he was expected back in 1994.
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Then the advanced browser was the well-known Netscape Navigator, released by Netscape Communications in 1994. As a manufacturer of one of the most popular operating systems, Microsoft could not get past the Internet revolution. The company's developers were given a rather non-trivial task: to create a product that would become a direct competitor of Netscape, and which could be supplied both with the company's OS and for other platforms.

So IE was born.

Perhaps Microsoft would not have taken such a drastic step and direct confrontation, but the total dominance of Netscape and the inability of MSN to meet user needs were decisive factors. Fast enough, IE began to win back Netscape’s market share, and shipping it together to the planet’s most popular operating system gave growth an extra boost.

The triumph of Internet Explorer can be called the release of Windows XP - the OS, at that time, perfect for many in all. According to some reports, the share of IE6 that came with Windows XP at one point was 85% of the total browser market in the world.


Using browsers around the world, 2002

Since the release, versions of IE have been created that could be installed on machines running Linux or MacOS. Alternatives "donkey" practically did not exist. By the end of the century, Netscape was hopelessly behind a competitor, behind which stood the most effective distribution model and one of the largest IT capital.

However, instead of the rapid development further, from 2001 to 2006, Internet Explorer entered the era of stagnation, which “skipped” its market share to a “miserable” 50% instead of almost a hundred.

Probably no one really knows what guided Microsoft, when it was decided to try to impose the next "standard", as it happened with Windows. It may have been the place to be an unshakable confidence in one’s own infallibility, perhaps a belief in a “special MS mission”, but rather a banal short-sightedness and intoxication with success. After all, two monopolistic products in two main sectors of the sectors (desktop OS and browsers) are too many for one company, even if this company was Microsoft.

With the release of the "sixth donkey" and the advent of timid competitors, MS began to "tighten the screws" and try to "bend" the web for themselves. As a result, IE, like its predecessor defeated by Netscape, entered a period of stagnation and narcissism, while Opera, Firefox and, partly, Safari, won back a very substantial market share. Also, the MS browser did not comply with the requirements of the W3 consortium , which only aggravated the situation.

While Firefox and Opera followed the path of development, IE was still trying to “dictate its will”, not only to users, but also to developers. Sites, correctly displayed in competing browsers, mercilessly "drove" in IE, and the layout for the sixth version of Microsoft's browser has become something common. In a negative sense, by itself. Perhaps someone even cursed the desire to “impose all his life under IE6” on his colleagues.

It took five years for Microsoft to realize the failure of the so well-started thanks to Windows XP IE6. Only in 2006, IE7 was released, which, however, was already hopelessly behind competitors, and among users and developers inherited from ancestor a disrepute.

For some time the most controversial version of this product remained afloat. But at the end of the decade, the pre-installation and delivery of IE together with Windows XP played a cruel joke with MIcrosoft: the company itself had to agitate users in favor of abandoning the obsolete and “full of cheese” browser in favor of the new product. Unfortunately, the share that has persisted for quite a long time thanks to XP has forced many developers to impose themselves separately on IE6, and in the minds of some, it has become firmly established as the “gold standard.

In 2009-2010, a number of leading world services announced a complete refusal to support IE6 as an outdated browser, and its successors, IE7 and subsequent ones, could not repeat the success of their predecessor.


Funeral map of using IE6 around the world. Statistics for March 2015

It would seem that the “second browser war,” in which Microsoft had a chance to take part, was hopelessly lost. And the web has become thousands of times more than in the mid-nineties. But the company continued to struggle in this market, because now the browser from the final product has acquired the features of another tool.

Google showed the world that search engines will rule the ball in the coming decades. It is likely that the main reason for creating Google Chrome was the need for a browser that will provide the user with a "search out of the box" for a particular company. For example, now Firefox offers a default search from Yandex (where it is popular), and Internet Explorer did the same with Bing.

With all the homeliness in the Russian-speaking open spaces, where besides the global Google player and local searches, there was enough (at least Yandex and the very popular Rambler at the beginning of the century), Bing in the west has a fairly large audience. Statistics and information about requests and pages from the browser allows you to increase, according to some opinions, the relevance of the issue. Plus, Microsoft still has a trump card in the form of the omnipresent Windows, which many people hate, but "continue to gnaw."


Statistics of the use of major browsers around the world for the last year, clickable

For more than a year, Internet Explorer has officially retired, and Edge has taken its place - the same IE under a different sign. He, like IE, “cracks” under the pressure of competitors in the face of Google Chrome and Firefox, but does not give up. Throwing out the attempts of the last fifteen years is a shame. The case of Nokia and Windows Phone, showed that Microsoft retreats extremely rarely and reluctantly, especially on the field, which it considers its own.

It all started 21 years ago. On August 16, 1995, Internet Explorer 1.0 was released as part of the paid Microsoft Plus !, which included various add-ons for Windows 95. It's hard to imagine, but what gets into the load today could only be obtained in a package for $ 50.