Back in the day, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the essential tool for surfing the World Wide Web as the Internet browser came preloaded with Redmond's operating system. However, over the years, Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Opera's Internet browser quickly overtook the market, leading to the fast decline of Internet Explorer. As such is the case, Microsoft has finally seen it fit to finally kill off old versions of its Internet browser.
As of Jan. 12, Microsoft has axed its support for all of the old versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 9 and below. However, Redmond will be keeping its support for IE 11, which also happens to be the most recent version of Internet Explorer.
Users who are still making full use of the older versions of Internet Explorer will be receiving an "End of Life" notification, informing them about the browser's development, as well as urging them to use the company's IE 11 or the Microsoft Edge browser, which is the company's browser that came in Windows 10. Edge, which was known before as Project Spartan, is designed to perform better with the modern web standard. Moreover, the announcement could also be good news for developers, as they will no longer have to provide support for older versions of Internet Explorer.
However, it's also important to note that older versions of Internet Explorer can still be used. But Microsoft won't be releasing any more patches, security updates, as well as technical upgrades. As such, users of these old versions will be more vulnerable to viruses, hackers and malware and will also be subject to a substandard browsing experience.
According to W3Schools, Internet Explorer was the world's most used Internet browser during 2008, accounting to 46 per cent of users in the world. However, from then on, the numbers had plummeted, and only 6.8 percent of users account to the total share of Internet browsers.
