Memes

Internet Explorer left such an imprint on the culture, that it will never go away. It will live forever, similar to the floppy disk save icon. The next generation will still know of it because the aging xboomers and millennials will continue to reference it. The IE logo will live on as a representation of pain.

Internet Explorer was always awful. It started off with the browser wars of the 90s between Netscape and Internet Explorer. Then it lived on well past its useful age because so many Windows developers made apps that required IE. IE paled in comparison to newer web browsers of the 2000s, but companies could not get rid of it because so many of their poorly designed and critical business applications required Internet Explorer to work. Everybody dragged their feet on moving away from those IE-based applications because it costs time and money to replace. In many cases, the companies that developed the software were no longer in business. And if the original vendor still existed, they had so few developers experienced in unraveling decades-old code, that if they could upgrade the software they charged a pretty penny.

Companies didn't want to budget for the cost of replacing IE-based software so they dragged their feet. Microsoft kept extending the lifespan of IE because completely killing it would have a huge impact on so many companies that it could have real negative impacts on the economy.

IT people hate it. To this day, some still suffer with maintaining IE based applications or creating poorly-crafted work arounds. Office workers hate it because many were forced to use it everyday because it powered some critical function such as payroll, budgeting, HR, etc. IE represents everything awful in the age of computers.

You will never escape Internet Explorer.