Internet Explorer gains “grave” in South Korea after being retired

To Jung Ki-young, a software engineer South Korean the decision of Microsoft retiring his Internet Explorer browser marked the end of a quarter-century love-hate relationship with technology.

To commemorate his death, he spent a month and 430,000 won (about US$330) designing and ordering a headstone with the Explorer “e” logo and the English epitaph: “He was a good tool for downloading other browsers.”

After the memorial was displayed at a cafe run by his brother in the southern city of Gyeongju, a photo of the tombstone went viral. social networks .

Microsoft retired Internet Explorer, once ubiquitous in the digital world, on Wednesday after 27 years to focus on its most agile browser, Microsoft Edge.

Jung said the memorial showed his conflicted feelings for the software oldest in activity, who played such an important role in his professional life.

“It was a pain in the ass, but I would call it a love-hate relationship because Explorer himself has dominated an era,” he said.

He said it took longer to make sure his websites and online apps worked with Explorer than they did with other browsers.

But his customers kept asking him to make sure their sites looked good on Explorer, which remained the default browser in South Korean government offices and many banks for years.

Launched in 1995, Explorer became the world’s leading browser for over a decade as it came with Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which came pre-installed on billions of computers.

But it started to lose ground to Chrome’s Google in the late 2000s and became the subject of countless memes in Internet with some developers suggesting it was slow compared to its rivals.

Jung said he intended to make people laugh with the headstone, but is still surprised at the extent of the online joke.

“That’s another reason to thank Explorer, it’s now allowed me to make a world-wide joke,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s gone, but I won’t miss it. So his retirement, for me, is a good death.”