This week (June 15, 2022), Microsoft has “shutdown” Internet Explorer, ending the use of the obsolete browser. Although the company had been preparing for this step for a long time and warned users, the termination of IE support provoked real chaos in Japan, where IE was still in use by many companies and government agencies.
It must be said that Microsoft developers have long been phasing out support for Internet Explorer, whose market share is about 5%, and wer trying to transfer users to the Edge browser. For example, back in 2020, Microsoft enabled IE-to-Edge forced redirects for all users. Since then, over 1,000 different sites have stopped opening in IE altogether, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, ESPN, StackOverflow, Yahoo Mail, and so on. Visitors of such resources were automatically redirected to Edge.On June 15, 2022, as scheduled, Internet Explorer 11 was removed from client builds of Windows 10 20H2 and later and Windows IoT 20H2 and later. In Windows 11, an outdated browser is absent since Edge is the default browser in the new OS version.
Now the desktop version of IE will redirect users to Edge for several months and then eliminate the browser.
However, some products are not affected by IE elimination: IE Mode in Edge, desktop IE 11 in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 (Extended Security Updates), Windows Server LTSC (all versions), Windows Server 2022, Windows 10 LTSC client ( all versions), Windows 10 IoT LTSC (all versions).
It’s worth noting that Microsoft Edge’s IE mode will be supported until at least 2029, giving developers a long eight years to upgrade legacy apps.
Although preparations for June 15 have been underway for a long time, and users have been warned about the upcoming changes, the Nikkei reports that the “death” of IE came as an unpleasant surprise for many Japanese companies, provoking absolute chaos.
Since April of this year, Computer Engineering & Consulting, a Tokyo-based software developer, has been flooded with requests for help, according to journalists. The problem is that the clients, mostly government agencies, financial institutions, and manufacturing and logistics companies, have been running websites that are only compatible with Internet Explorer.
A March survey by IT firm Keyman’s Net showed similar problems, showing that many organizations in Japan still use Internet Explorer. At the same time, 49% of respondents said they use a browser for work.
According to those interviewed, the browser, in particular, was used to manage employee attendance, calculate expenses, and several other internal tools. In some cases, companies had no choice since IE was tied to the customer systems needed to process orders.
Worse, over 20% of respondents admitted they didn’t know or understand how to migrate to other browsers after Internet Explorer ended support.
The media write that Japanese government agencies are especially slow to respond to the rejection of IE. For example, a site that hosts information on public procurement and tenders only this week began to recommend users not Internet Explorer but Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome browsers.
You need to view the site in IE mode in Edge to use the Japan Pension Service website and online applications. And on many other government resources, Internet Explorer is still listed as the only recommended browser.
