At one point in Windows 10’s lifetime, you could have had Internet Explorer, the legacy version of Microsoft Edge, and the new Chromium-powered Edge all installed. This trio of browsers was the perfect illustration of Microsoft’s struggles with the web over the past decade, but now that Internet Explorer is being put out to pasture in 2022, it’s disappearing from Windows 11, too.
Microsoft announced on Friday that Internet Explorer will be “disabled” in its new OS. “The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will not be available on Windows 11. Microsoft Edge is the default browser for Windows 11,” stated a Microsoft spokesperson in an interview with The Verge. “The MSHTML engine exists as part of the Windows 11 operating system to power IE mode in Microsoft Edge.”
It’s the first time Microsoft hasn’t bundled Internet Explorer with a new version of Windows for more than 20 years. The Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.5 in 1997 was the first time Microsoft explicitly bundled Internet Explorer into Windows Explorer and other key parts of Windows.
So if you’ve been a diehard Explorer fan, go ahead and bereave the soon-to-be departed, but get ready to launch a new browser. Remember, life is change.
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