2022/06/22
By Michael Levenson
Microsoft will be disabling IE and directing Windows users to its modern Edge web browser in coming months. The news inspired jokes, memes and even some fond memories.
It was Aug. 16, 1995. “Waterfalls” by TLC was the No. 1 song in the country. Bill Clinton was in the White House. And Microsoft introduced a new way to surf the web: Internet Explorer.
It was buggy and slow, many said. But it was always there. Until it wasn’t. On Wednesday, the web browser, loved and loathed by a generation, was officially retired, swept into the dustbin of internet history.
The occasion stirred surprisingly strong feelings of nostalgia for the 1990s and early 2000s, an era when many first came to know the online world through stuttering dial-up connections, chat rooms and long-gone social media sites like Friendster.