Internet Explorer might be one of the most controversial applications in history. Included with every copy of Windows after Windows 95 and several versions of 95 itself, this browser gave Microsoft plenty of legal headaches, but it also developed a poor reputation from a technical point of view.
Eventually, Microsoft ended IE’s reign of mediocrity and today Microsoft Edge is just another implementation of Chromium, but while the corpse of IE rots in the soil of history, its acrid ghost is still hanging around.
The Death That Never Stuck
Microsoft ended Internet Explorer with IE 11, retiring it in mid-2022. The problem is that a lot of websites only worked properly using Internet Explorer. Something I know very well, since until very recently the tax filing website in my country would only work using Internet Explorer, which meant if you were a Mac or Linux user you pretty much had no way of filing your taxes!
This is true for a lot of legacy systems, some of them facing the public (i.e. government or large corporate sites) or, more likely, internal websites that haven’t been changed or updated in decades, but are still crucial for many companies, or institutions like universities or hospitals to function.
Which is why we have Internet Explorer Mode in Microsoft Edge. This lets Edge pretend to be IE so legacy sites and systems will work. Microsoft has pledged this mode will remain available “at least” through 2029, but you know with the speeds some big organizations move, it will have to stick around longer than that.
The Weight of Backward Compatibility
Enterprises are often sitting atop decades of sunk cost invested in IE-dependent applications—from ActiveX components to internal reporting tools. These apps were never designed for modern browsers, and rewriting them en masse is painful, expensive, and risky.
The sheer weight of accumulated code (usually poorly-commented, if at all) makes it so that you can’t just wipe the slate clean and update everything. The biggest danger is disrupting day-to-day operations. I worked in the IT department of a large organization for years, and watched how the developers who maintain and update the servers had to work at the speed of molasses lest they suddenly cause millions of dollars in lost productivity because of a single mistake.
The problem is that it’s like a game of Jenga, but there are thousands of blocks, and you have no idea how they all interact. And so, getting your systems to work with modern browsers isn’t nearly as simple as it might sound. A lot of the time it’s just the public-facing websites of a business that work with modern browsers, because that’s what customers use, but under the surface it’s all dependent on a hamster-powered laptop running the core code that no-one dares touch.
Why Microsoft Can’t Just Say “No”
The ghost of IE still haunts us for much the same reason the Windows Control Panel is still around. You see, big enterprises won’t sign those lucrative software deals if they don’t have certain guarantees you won’t pull the rug from under them. As a normal customer, you and I have no right to complain when Microsoft suddenly removes a feature you depend on, or decides to stuff unsolicited ads into your operating system.
There are these little things known as “contracts” and “service level agreements” where the software vendor promises that you’ll always have a certain level of stability and support. This means that Microsoft actually has to consult with these large customers before unilaterally changing stuff in their own software.
Something like IE Mode exists so that MS can have it both ways. It can implement a modern browser that complies with the same standards other browsers do, while still giving legacy systems a way to work that might not be the most secure solution, but it’s still better than running Windows XP on a virtual machine so that critical infrastructure can stay functional.
The Ghost That Will Outlive Us All
Even with IE’s formal retirement, its shadow will linger for years—decades, perhaps—through enterprise inertia, regulatory lag, and compatibility needs. It’s an example of what corporate IT people like to call “technical debt”, which is a polite way of saying that shortcuts from the past now have to be paid for.
It’s a great cautionary tale about how early dominance by one piece of software can tie a boat-anchor to progress. Just like PDFs became popular through the free Acrobat Reader, IE became the default browser for organizations and people simply because it was included with Windows. That’s not an issue by itself, but because IE wasn’t a very good browser, and had all sorts of idiosyncrasies, it warped the web itself to fit.
Now that we’ve moved past IE itself, the ripple effects of that remain and will probably always be lurking somewhere in the bowels of the web.