14 DAY TRIAL // In addition to Internet Explorer, Windows 10 is very likely to ship with a brand new browser that's currently known internally at Microsoft as “Spartan,” so many people already believe that the famous Windows browser is about to die.
And they might be right, given the fact that Microsoft is fighting to address the negative perception over Internet Explorer, so offering a new browser that would provide features which could easily compete with those of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox would be the best way to do this.
Sources claim that Internet Explorer is likely to come alongside Spartan in Windows 10, but only for backwards compatibility, which means that it would only be there to make sure that users and companies won't have any issue when running old applications and services on their PCs, even if they migrate to the new OS version.
So, does this mean that Internet Explorer's end is nearing? Nobody can predict it right now, but this might indeed be the beginning of a transition that would eventually get Internet Explorer out of Windows for good.
And still, there's one reason that makes Internet Explorer a must-have in Windows. And that is market share.
Running on 58 percent of the world's PCs
Despite the negative perception, statistics show that Internet Explorer continues to be running on more than 1 in 2 of the world's computers and this is clearly a positive thing for Microsoft. If the company indeed decides to replace Internet Explorer with a new browser, this would really have a hard time conquering such a big part of the market and the company might need years to achieve the same results as with Internet Explorer.
So yes, Internet Explorer is often referred to as “the best browser to download another browser,” but this isn't happening for everyone, and there are lots of companies out there that still rely on Internet Explorer to access their apps and services.
At this point, Internet Explorer has a market share of 58.94 percent, according to NetMarketShare data, while Google Chrome is second with 20.57 percent, followed by Firefox and Safari with 13.26 and 5.90 percent, respectively.
Microsoft also considered renaming Internet Explorer
Redmond indeed wants to fight the negative perception over Internet Explorer, and the company even considered renaming the browser in order to give it a new chance to compete with Chrome and Firefox.
The Internet Explorer team revealed in an AMA session on Reddit that Microsoft indeed considered such a name change and even hinted that this kind of approach could be adopted in the coming years.
“It's been suggested internally; I remember a particularly long email thread where numerous people were passionately debating it. Plenty of ideas get kicked around about how we can separate ourselves from negative perceptions that no longer reflect our product today,” a member of the Internet Explorer team explained.
More information on Internet Explorer's possible replacement is very likely to be provided next month, during the Windows 10 consumer event, so then we'll know for sure if Spartan can live together or without the existing Windows browser.