Netizens Mourn & Celebrate the Impending Death of Internet Explorer, the Web's Most Memeable Browser

Ada Elder

May 20, 2021 8:00 PM EDT

Just weeks after the painful loss of Yahoo Answers, millennials are now going to have to say goodbye to another formative part of their early internet-surfing careers: Internet Explorer. Microsoft announced this week that it would be retiring support for the oft-ridiculed browser on June 15, 2022. While the formal nature of the news may have surprised some people, the reality is that most of us saw this coming from a few miles and years away. One huge clue was the release of the Microsoft Edge browser in 2015. Since then, Edge has become the preferred browser for people who aren't simply using Microsoft's products to download more popular alternatives, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

Using Internet Explorer - a 26 year old program - to download Chrome or Firefox is one of the most common jokes memers have been making about the browser. The other trope is that the program moves at the pace of a handicapped snail. These mocking memes have been circulating the web for nearly 20 years. It's no wonder that people are Twitter are responding to this news in the same fashion. While browsers may die, its pretty clear that the jokes will live on - at least until the internet decides its time to gang up on Microsoft Edge. To metaphorically pour one out for the doomed browser, we've put together some of our favorite reactions in this gallery - along with some classic Internet Explorer memes for posterity. RIP to a real one. A real slow one.