Microsoft who has struggled to convince users to adopt their Internet Explorer browser over the popular Google Chrome has finally thrown in the towel with the IE name set to disappear.
Internet Explorer, the Microsoft browser that is almost 20 years old, is to be killed off and replaced by a new operating system that currently has the code name Spartan.
Currently Microsoft is researching several names in an effort to find a name that appeals to users.
“We’re now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10,” the company’s marketing chief Chris Capossela told a conference this week.
Internet Explorer once dominated the market but it failed to deliver speed or flexible design as a result users deserted the browser in the tens of millions for the faster Google Chrome and Firefox.
At one stage IE had over one billion users, now Microsoft is dropping the brand in a bid to shed “negative perceptions” gathered since its 1995 launch.
The software is known to be slow and has had various security problems.
The company has often talked about changing the browsers’ name to rejuvenate its reputation.
Nearly a decade ago, Dean Hachamovitch, then-head of the Internet Explorer business, is said to have told an industry conference: “We messed up.”
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Tom Bedecarre, chairman of Akqa, a digital advertising agency, told the Daily Telegraph in London that the Internet Explorer brand was past its sell-by date.
“In the war of the future, which is mobile, they’re losing,” he told the Financial Times. “Nobody’s going to download Internet Explorer as their mobile browser.”
Jason Liggi, a developer at Ascot-based digital agency Rawnet, said: “Microsoft’s change in direction is a smart, albeit bold, and a symbolic gesture. Internet Explorer has developed a fairly bad reputation over the years, by and large because of IE6-7, but also because of its implementation of web standards.
“This change in name is going to bring with it a raft of psychological improvements for users. Internet Explorer, and referring to it as ‘IE’, generally elicits groans across the board, even with people outside of tech communities. It’s just got negative connotations nowadays, and it will be interesting to see the changes the new name will bring for the brand.”
Despite the rebrand, a version of IE will be included in the next Windows launch as well as the Spartan browser, to aid companies that have developed software to work with the browser.
