Microsoft has announced that it is finally shutting down Internet Explorer in June 2022. The desktop application after a cycle of over 25 years gets retired and will be replaced by Microsoft Edge which it launched in January last year.

Along with the Internet Explorer, services included in Microsoft 365, such as Outlook and OneDrive, will stop connecting to IE11 from 17 August 2021. Microsoft had said last year that withdrawing support for these services will get users a degraded experience on IE11.

"Today, we are at the next stage of that journey: We are announcing that the future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge," said the company.

Microsoft is finally retiring Internet Explorer in 2022 https://t.co/JZnvln57fT pic.twitter.com/X4qWjbQBSp
— The Verge (@verge) May 19, 2021

The tech giant said that this will affect all consumer versions of Internet Explorer. The browser will still get support on its Long-Term Servicing Channels (LTSC). The company has put a full list of what retirement covers.\

Though the Internet Explorer lost its relevance over the years, the browser is an important part of the history of the internet. The story of it spans the first big antitrust battle between Big Tech and regulators when Microsoft went in front of the US Department of Justice in the late 1990s. The outcome of that case is why many browsers today are free.

The web browser used to account for over 90% of the market share around 2004 but dropped steadily since the launch of Google Chrome in 2008. It has less than 1% market share today.