We had to say goodbye to an old friend yesterday: Internet Explorer is officially dead at age 26. It would have been 27 this August.
If you're too young to remember, it was the browser everyone used in the late '90s and early 2000s. It killed off Netscape, which is what everyone used before that.
Microsoft made it, but it was also the first browser that came pre-installed on Macs. It debuted in 1995, and more than 90% of people were using it by 2003.
Safari and Firefox came along in the mid 2000s and took a lot of those users. Then Chrome showed up in 2008. That's still what most people use now because it's faster. (Here's a video showing the user progression from 1995 to today.)
Microsoft announced they were killing it off last year, and officially ended support for it yesterday. If you try to use it now, it automatically redirects to their newer browser, Microsoft Edge, which is faster and more secure.
For weird old sites that only work in Explorer, there's a legacy mode in Edge that lets you keep accessing them. So there's really no need for Explorer anymore.
The famous Internet Explorer icon will also go away soon. They're planning a Windows update that will automatically remove it from all devices that still have it installed.