Image source @Visual
On May 16, the Microsoft Edge browser microblogger posted that Microsoft Internet Explorer will be officially retired on June 16, after which its functions will be taken over by the Edge browser.
Looking back, from the release of Windows 95 in 1995, it took IE eight years to capture 95% of the global browser market in 2003, riding on the historical breeze of rapid Internet development. Such "brilliance" is unmatched by any browser, or even any Internet product.
And right now, the center of gravity of the Internet has long come to the mobile end, APP exploded to cover the Internet market, the value of the PC browser was obviously impacted. But the problem is that the APP based on the browser has always been difficult to meet the long-tail needs of users. At this level, the PC browser has a unique value that cannot be replaced, and still plays the role of an important traffic entrance.
Therefore, it can be seen that Microsoft, which "gave up" IE, did not give up the browser business, but let IE's "stand-in" Edge take over the baton. However, under the current situation, facing strong rivals such as Google and the continued influence of mobile on PC, Edge's future is bound to be full of difficulties and challenges.
After nearly 30 years, IE, which opened the door of the Internet for people and witnessed the development of the Internet, just "voluntarily" retired from the stage of history. But no matter how the Internet will develop in the future, IE is an important and indispensable part of human Internet history.
A brilliant 95% market share
Right now, IE is not even close to the edge of the market.
According to international statistics site Statcounter, the top three browser market shares as of the end of March this year were Google Chrome (67.13%), Safari (9.75%) and Edge (8.81%), while Internet Explorer's share was less than 2%.
But even this remaining 2% is thanks to the "system bundled with browser" sales strategy.
[Source: statcounter]
It's hard to imagine that such a browser with less than 2% market share once monopolized the global market and was a gap that countless browsers have struggled to cross since.
In 1990, based on the world's first browser, WorldWideWeb, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications developed Mosaic, the first ever browser to gain widespread use, and with the resignation of Marc Andreesen, head of the Mosaic project, and the development of the Netscape Navigator browser, the curtain was pulled back on the human Internet era.
In a market where there were almost no rivals, Netscape Browser achieved monopoly from birth in just two to three years. As the browser has always been an important portal of the Internet, monopolizing the market at that time was basically the same as "controlling" the entire Internet. Such a situation is not a good news for Microsoft, which is both a computer system and a browser developer.
So, after the collapse of the active "strategic partnership", the first browser war in history was fought.
In order to effectively counteract Netscape, Bill Gates spent $2 billion on IE 1.0, released in August 1995, and quickly launched IE 2.0 through a variety of means. while the technology was upgraded, Bill Gates also decided to make IE free and open, targeting the paid Netscape browser.
[IE1.0 Source: Pacific Computer Network
The free and open decision showed the determination of Microsoft and Bill Gates, but in order to win a complete victory, Microsoft struck another blow by bundling the Windows 95 system with IE for sale in a deep bundle. When the browser that came with the computer system became IE, users "had" to use IE, Microsoft's situation began to become clearer, and began to quickly eat into the market share of Netscape browser.
In this life and death situation, Netscape browser, which focuses on browser features, is gradually being "disliked" by users because of too many features and lagging, bugs and other problems.
Microsoft took advantage of this opportunity and released IE 4.0 in October 1997, a browser that followed the W3C Internet standards better than Netscape and offered features such as MP3 playback. Since then, based on Microsoft's huge financial resources and bundled marketing and continuous research and development, Internet Explorer has been on a roll, taking over 80% of the market share.
Even though Netscape sued Microsoft in 1998 for monopoly and won the lawsuit, it was unable to resist Microsoft's attack and was acquired by America Online (AOL) for $4.2 billion. Thus, the first browser war of the Internet era ended with Microsoft's victory.
Monopoly replaces monopoly, old and new forces will always be exchanged, and in the battlefield of the Internet, a hint of laxity may determine ultimate success or failure.
However, after releasing IE 6.0, which was dubbed "the eighth worst technology product ever" and enjoyed a 96% market share in 2003, a proud Microsoft carelessly removed its armor. At one point, it even disbanded its browser team, resulting in IE not being updated for five years after 2001.
As mentioned earlier, competition in the Internet era is always in constant iteration. Microsoft, which stopped its browser for 5 years, not only laid the groundwork for the future decline of IE, but also moved the space for other competitors to grow.
The masses are rising and pushing the envelope
In the infancy of the Internet, the browser was the most important tool for computers to connect to the Internet. It not only acted as the main entrance of hardware to the Internet, linking all kinds of data and information, but also dovetailed with the direct interaction between countless users and the Internet, carrying the stickiness of the relationship between people and the net.
As a result, the browser market has always been a windy and uneventful place under the wheels of history.
In 1998, Netscape, which had lost the first browser war, made its browser source code public, renamed it Mozilla, rewrote the entire program, and released the first version in 2002. 2004 saw the debut of Firefox, a browser based on Mozilla's source code.
With its small size, efficiency, simplicity, security, open source code and support for extended customization, more and more people are choosing Firefox. Not only did Forbes call Firefox the "Best Browser of 2004", but the magazine PC World also listed Firefox in its "Top 100 Products of 2005".
[Source: Firefox Official Weibo]
The newborn calf is not afraid of the tiger, in the "good" situation, Firefox launched a strong attack on IE, the prologue of the second browser war was officially opened.
On February 15, 2005, Bill Gates moved up the release date of IE 7.0 for Longhorn Windows, directly stating that the reason for this was the gradual erosion of IE's market share by Firefox.
According to statistics, by 2006, IE's market share had fallen from a high of 96% to 85.62%, while Firefox's market share grew rapidly to 11.23%.
The thin camel is bigger than the horse, in IE's large user base and web standards two advantages, Firefox did not replace Netscape like IE and disrupt IE, market share has been hovering between 15% to 20%. Later Bill Gates said, "We will launch updated versions of the browser as soon as possible and frequently, so as to avoid the long night and other competitors to take away more market share."
It's just that one wrong step. For Microsoft, there's more than just one Firefox player in the market anymore, and this second browser war is a lot more complicated than one might think.
Before IE had fully slowed down, including Firefox, there had been a number of great browser players in the market with the rapid growth of the global Internet era.
For example, the Norwegian Opera, which was born based on the Presto engine, has made a name for itself on mobile devices such as smartphones. Another example is Maxthon, which put its main foothold in China, and according to Baidu, 15% of Baidu users were using this browser at that time. Then there is Safari, which emerged with the rise of Apple and led the global mobile browser market.
Microsoft really felt the crisis and started to focus on improving Internet Explorer. But the reality was that Microsoft could only watch its market share being taken away little by little in the face of encroachers with unique advantages.
Of course, on the PC side, it wasn't players like Firefox and Opera that really pulled IE off the throne, but the advent of Google Chrome.
In 2008, Google officially released the first Chrome Beta version and placed the download link on its official website. With the breadth of the world involving more than 100 countries, and with its brand influence, many users around the world downloaded Chrome.
[Source: Chrome]
Users soon discovered that Chrome is not only secure, fast, and also supports a variety of new web features and standards, and has a streamlined look. What's more, chrome is completely open source, for its browser kernel Chromium, all the source code needed to get and make a browser is available to everyone for free, for example, domestic 360, QQ, Sogou, UC and other multi-core browsers are using Chromium.
Compared to Chrome, IE is completely in the opposite side, not only security risks, poor compatibility, but also card and slow, less features, appearance is not good, and even a large number of online paragraphs about IE ......
With such a stark disparity, Google's Chrome surpassed IE in market share for the first time in 2012, while Microsoft launched IE11 in 2013, which became the last version of IE. By 2015, IE's market share had fallen below 20%, while Chrome ranked first, with a 52.82% market share.
The strong rise of Google Chrome has officially announced the end of the second browser war and the end of the era belonging to IE.
Edge who took over the baton
One argument is that for free tool products, users tend to make trade-offs based on the experience of using them.
With the disruption of Google Chrome, the defeat of IE has been irrevocable, and Microsoft has finally decided to abandon this product that has grown and fought with it for years.
In 2020, Microsoft ends support for Internet Explorer 11 for MicrosoftTeams web applications and plans to cut off its access to Microsoft 365 services later this year. And in 2021, the "planned" death of IE was officially announced.
But what is certain is that the browser, while not having much commercial value in itself, is one of the most basic Internet portals that directs traffic to various ports. And most of the APP itself, is also based on the browser kernel developed. So although abandoned IE, but Microsoft did not give up the "browser".
After abandoning IE, Microsoft developed a new browser, Edge, which was not completely free from the shadow of IE, and was built with Microsoft's own EdgeHTML engine, which still had little advantage over Chrome.
In August 2020, Microsoft officially launched the stable version of Edge browser with Chromium core, referred to as C version. Edge.
[Source: Edge browser]
After Edge C came out, it has greatly surpassed IE 11 in terms of performance and functions, which directly decided the end of IE being completely abandoned.
As for Microsoft, whether Chrome-based Edge can pick up the slack or even recreate the glory of IE back then, there are different voices in the market. Some people are bullish, some are bearish.
Bullish people believe that Win10 users are increasingly recognizing the Edge browser, not only gaining a good user reputation, but also growing share.
According to the latest data from StatCounter, Microsoft Edge browser crossed the 10% market share mark in April 2022. While it's still a far cry from Google Chrome's 66.64% share, it's natural that Microsoft will be able to reclaim more market share as it continues to update it.
Bearish people argue that Edge is based on the Chromium core and that overtaking Chrome is impossible.
On the one hand rivals have accumulated more and more advantages. On the other hand, the advent of the mobile Internet era has shifted the browser competition from the computer desktop to the mobile desktop, and the decline of PC browsers has been irreversible. The failure of Windows Phone means that Microsoft has a challenging road to enter this market, so even if Edge continues to grow, it may struggle in the market.
All in all, the browser is an extremely important tool in the Internet era, and the smoke will always continue on its battlefield. Imperfect technology will always be innovated and eliminated, someone will always fall in the war, but there will always be a new hegemon to emerge, Microsoft is no exception, and Google will not be an exception.