The disappearance of Internet Explorer. Why is this not good news?

Microsoft Edge download page

Microsoft Edge is Microsoft's first browser with a Linux version.

Far from being good news, the disappearance of Internet Explorer impoverishes users' options when it comes to choosing how to navigate. One thing are the web standards, agreed by all the participants of the network, and quite another are the de facto standards imposed by who controls some of the most popular web services and half of the mobile device market.

This is not about defending Microsoft, in the previous article we saw that it was not cut off when it came to imposing its participation in the market. But chen users, competition, and regulators had forced the company to produce a new version more friendly to web standards, Google's monopolistic practices forced it to scrap its work and become one of the companies forced to use the Chrome code base.

How was the disappearance of Internet Explorer

The enduring success of Windows XP and the failure of Windows Vista meant that Internet Explorer 8, included with Windows 7, should be compatible with three operating systems.

Some of its features are the favorites bar, the private browsing mode and the protection so that when a tab is blocked, it will not affect the navigation of the others.

The year 2011 was not the year of Linux on the desktop either, but it marked a milestone in the growing (and forced) abandonment of Microsoft's monopolistic behavior and its approach to web standards and open source.

Internet Explorer version 9 had support for several HTML 5 components, improved support for style sheets, and a faster Javascript engine.

In other news, it included a redesigned user interface and layered protection against malware.

It was also part of Microsoft's efforts to kill off Windows XP as it was not compatible with this version.

Of Internet Explorer 10 there is very little that can be said. It was designed to match the new Windows 8 interface and, in an acknowledgment of the failure of Silverlight technology, included support for Adobe Flash.

The interface of Windows 8 was not to everyone's liking. Microsoft released a redesigned version known as Windows 8.1. This Windows brought the latest version of Internet Explorer. It offered support for high resolution screens. It came to support HTTP/2.13 and SPDY, it was compatible with Flexbox and image borders in style sheets, cryptographic APIs and encrypted media content. In addition, it showed the subtitles in the videos, improvements in the execution of Javascript and renewed web design tools.

Last battle and surrender

As the news that Windows 10 would have became known, Microsoft surprised everyone with the announcement of Project Spartan, a completely new browser that would be faster and integrated with the Cortana assistant.

This project would be known, once Windows 10 was released, as Microsoft Edge. Edge was not compatible with any other version of Windows.

But, it was already late. Edge never got off the ground and Microsoft threw in the towel.

At the time, Redmond accused Google of artificially worsening the performance of its services when accessed from a Microsoft browser. Whether true or not, andIt was impossible to access the browser, Gmail or Documents without running into the offer to download Chrome and the promise that the user experience would improve notably. And, indeed, it was. Google took care of that.

In 2018, following the example of Opera and Vivaldi, Microsoft announced that the next version of Edge would be based on Chromium, the open source base of Chrome. Gone are the days when Internet Explorer's market share was so large that the European Union forced Windows to include the option to choose the default browser.

With the code base change came the first version of a Microsoft browser for Linux. In fact, Microsoft offered Internet Explorer in the form of a virtual machine for developers, but it is not the same.

In any case, it is a poor consolation for the new and, even worse, quasi-monopoly that web development is experiencing. A single company decides what users can use or not. And, that's too much power.


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  1.   Genius said

    I have never agreed with monopolies. Chrome has been on the market for so many years, that there has been plenty of time, for anyone to come out with another better browser and nobody has done it, is it impossible? unseated by Chrome, because of a monopoly? It could be that no, the monopoly at that time was Internet Explorer, then why did Chrome unseat it? Well, because it was a much better browser, point ball, that is not a monopoly, that is having two c*jones to know how to do things, since Chrome unseated IE look if years have passed, because nobody has had the holy c*jones to release a browser that unseats Chrome and that is not a monopoly, that is not knowing do things, because just as IE was supposedly a monopoly and fell for Chrome, the same thing could happen to Chrome, point ball. With Microsoft the same, why doesn't an operating system come out that unseats Windows? Impossible? No, far from it, but since they don't have the c*jones to do it, it's more comfortable to call it a monopoly. A clear example is Android, which dominates the mobile market, 8 out of 10 mobile phones in the world are Android, is it also a monopoly? they do. So everything is called a monopoly and they get so fed up and for me they are not a monopoly, they are geniuses. Overnight Chrome took over the entire world, offering excellent products of enormous quality and for me that is not a monopoly, it is being a genius.

    1.    Miguel Rodriguez said

      Monopoly: it is a legal privilege in which there is a producer or economic agent (called a monopolist) that has great market power and is the only one in a given industry that has a specific and differentiated product, good, resource or service.

      The problem is that companies like Google are called a monopoly because since they began offering their browser, they have done everything possible through the services you offer such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Workspace, etc... to make these services more compatible with your browser than with the rest of the competition. To the extent that people began to use Google services more for convenience, since it basically includes passwords, bookmarks, add-ons, photos, office work, search engine, email, etc... And these services were displayed and worked better in Chrome than in the competition, because Google keeps the code of the changes that it normally makes in its services closed, causing subtle but annoying failures to happen to the user practically overnight in other competing products between internet browsers. Something about what I remember, there has already been an article in linuxadictos.

      On the other hand, regarding operating systems, it is not that Windows or Android are better, but that the companies behind these systems for PC and Mobile, such as Microsoft and Google respectively, make contracts, where the agreement obliges the parties involved to access, that is, the privilege of having the necessary documentation for the drivers of the equipment (be it a PC or a Mobile respectively according to the system), this means that other developments such as Linux have to struggle to create free drivers (based on testing each device, interpreting their analog signals to convert them into machine code) to work or until the manufacturer of these components releases them (when no longer forced by contract).

      So yes, there is a monopoly, no, it is not about mediocrity, much less a lack of genius, it is not a lack of interest in unseating these monopolies, it is not a coincidence, much less for leisure or fashion or fun that there are movements for the benefit of Free Software, Open Source and even Open Hardware. Being the latter the most in diapers with respect to the two first mentioned, it is The Privilege that is obtained through the Force of the State because it is this entity that provides "The Law", it is that this class of problems and situations is made lawful.

  2.   rv said

    It is a bit insolvent that «Linux Adictos» come to the defense of Microsoft and its horrible browser that (first and foremost) is proprietary software. As free software users, we don't care about the constant slaughter among capitalists who don't even have the delicacy to release the source code (copyleft) produced by their exploited employees. Yesterday Microsoft had a monopoly, today Alphabet, tomorrow Whatever.
    It is true that an oligopoly is not equal to a duopoly in this equal to a monopoly. But from the field of proprietary software they take care of their business, from the field of free software we have to take care of free developments.
    As informative news, the article is fine, but from there to say that "the disappearance of Internet Explorer impoverishes the options of users when choosing how to navigate" seems a bit much. Precisely with proprietary software there is very little that one can "choose how to navigate", without counting all the abuses of Microsoft against its users.
    regards

    1.    Diego German Gonzalez said

      1) Linux Adictos He doesn't defend anything. There is a reason the articles are signed.
      2) When were you elected arbiter of what should or should not be of interest to users of open source software?
      3) Except for Firefox and some derivatives, all open source browsers opted for Chromium. That there is an alternative, even if it is exclusive, is better than no alternative.

      1.    rv said

        How are you,

        1) It seems like a gray/debatable area to me. Yeah Linux Adictos publishes something that produces a legal reaction, it will not matter that the article is signed by someone in particular, there will be a shared responsibility, among other things because every medium has what is called an editorial line, etc. But well, it is worth clarifying that this is not a position of Linux Adictos but exclusive to the editor of the note.
        2) I suppose it is a rhetorical question, I understand that it is not necessary to answer it.
        3) To begin with, that the alternative to a proprietary software is another proprietary software, from one point of view, it is equivalent to there being no alternative (it is like having to choose whether to be hit with a whip or a rubber band...), but, More importantly, you yourself have just pointed out that *there is already an alternative* (Firefox and derivatives), so not only is there no need to defend proprietary "alternatives", but it makes more sense to push true free alternatives, as is the case with Firefox, SeaMonkey, PaleMoon, WaterFox, surf, Falkon, Konqueror, Epiphany/Web, eolie, Tangram, qutebrowser, … Basically all those that are based on Gecko, Qt/WebKit/GTK, etc., that is, engines that are not Blink.

        There you can see ordered by 'layout engine': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#General_information

        Also there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Graphical

        Regards!