Happy Birthday IE – Microsoft Internet Explorer turns 15 today. It was on 16th August 1995, Internet Explorer 1 released by Microsoft.
In these 15 years of fascinating journey, IE had it’s good times as well tough times. During the early days of web, Netscape was trying to become a dominant web browser application. When Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer along with Windows operating system, IE became the most popular web browser and it thrown out Netscape not only from the No 1 position but also from the market. Yes IE mercilessly murdered Netscape :). That was the dominance of IE.
The dominance of IE started to wane when Firefox, an open source and free web browser was launched in 1998. Firefox addressed majority of the problem IE had and quickly grabbed the market share, especially it has become a darling of Geeks and Programmers.
Even though IE does have the huge web browser market share it use to have in early 2000s, at the age of 15 it is still the dominant browser. According to latest statistics Internet Explorer now has a market share of 60%, Firefox is at 23% followed by Google Chrome and other browser. Not bad! huh.
Microsoft is currently working hard to retain the supremacy with its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser. Internet Explorer 9 is scheduled for a public beta release in a month or so.