NEW DELHI: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), which once was the world’s most popular browser – it had a peak market share of 95% in 2003 – will soon become history. Microsoft has announced that it will cease all support for it in August next year. In some products, like Teams, it will stop working even earlier.
Google’s Chrome – with its speed, cleaner look, thousands of extensions (such as for translation, ad blocking), and better privacy options – has become almost the default browser for much of the world. In India, even more so. While Chrome has a market share of 66% globally across devices and consoles, it’s as high as 82% in India, according to web analytics service StatCounter. That goes up to 85% if only desktops are considered. In contrast, IE is at just 0.2% (0.5% for desktops alone).
Government agencies and financial institutions are said to be about the only ones still using IE.
Pranesh Prakash, fellow of the Centre for Internet and Society, said the decision by Microsoft is a good time for the government to modernise its technology. “It can look at Linux, which is free and open source. The government already has Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS), which is a variant of Linux, and can help to move away from software that is old,” he said.
The government’s National Policy on Information Technology has adoption of open standards and promotion of open source and open technologies among its objectives.
Microsoft’s revamped Edge browser, released in January and which it hopes will be better able to compete with Chrome, also uses open source code. In fact, the same code that is at the root of Chrome and the Opera browser.
Viral Shah, CEO of Julia Computing, says IE is very old now, and web technology has considerably evolved, become more secure, and much more capable. “Some of the older technologies in IE were also not open (they were proprietary and only available on Microsoft platforms). Today, Microsoft takes open systems and open source a lot more seriously,” he says.
For government agencies that have business continuity requirements on old platforms, they should be able to keep using those platforms for the moment. “But this is a clear signal for them to upgrade to new technology, which is built around open platforms and open technologies, with multiple vendors providing support. This should all result in savings for the government (and hence the taxpayer), while greatly improving the quality of service,” Shah says.
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August 20, 2020 at 09:54AM
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Microsoft pulls plug on Explorer, once leading browser - Times of India
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