Internet Explorer has been mourned in Korea, but it's very strange

On June 15, the once "legendary" application Internet Explorer (IE) was officially "killed" by Microsoft, ending its 27 years of service.

Internet Explorer launched in August 1995 and was the beloved web browser from Microsoft. In 1999, IE rose to dominance in the browser market with more than 80% market share.

But after that, IE could no longer stand, the browser's market share began to gradually decrease, and recently it was less than 1%. One of the main reasons is that IE does not follow international standards of web technology, it does not work well with JavaScript and other programming languages ​​necessary to create interaction on web pages. Besides, the rise of many competitors such as Chrome also contributed to IE's decline.

In recent times, many times IE has been made fun of by netizens because of its slowness and weakness. However, when this browser was 'discontinued', many people felt sorry for this once legendary browser.

To express his "infinite regret" to this long-time friend, Kiyoung Jung, a software engineer in Korea, built a tomb, or a memorial, for this browser on the rooftop of the hotel. cafe managed by his brother in Gyeongju indefinitely.

Monument with the letter "E" symbol of Internet Explorer, along with the description "He is a good tool for downloading other browsers".

Immediately after the image of this memorial was posted online, many people couldn't help but feel funny.

Jung shared that he "suffered" a lot because he had to spend many extra hours fixing errors when designing the program to be compatible with Internet Explorer. So when Internet Explorer stopped working, he was very happy but also couldn't help but feel nostalgic about its heyday. So he built a tomb for this browser.

One surprising thing is that even though it has been usurped for a long time, IE still has a certain dominance in Japan and Korea.

Until 2014, Koreans had to use Internet Explorer for online shopping and banking transactions. Even then, IE still remained the second most used browser in the country.

In Japan, until last March, 49% of organizations in this country relied on IE to work. Therefore, when IE was 'discontinued', Japanese businesses and government agencies had a headache in finding alternative solutions.

David Pac

Update 01 August 2024