It’s the end of the road for Internet Explorer (IE). Once the king of browsers that reigned in nearly 95 percent of PCs, it will be phased out by 2021.

Microsoft Teams web app will stop supporting IE 11 from November 30, 2020 while the rest of the Microsoft 365 apps and services will do likewise from August 17, 2021.

According to a Microsoft blog post earlier this week, users will have a degraded experience or be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11 after these dates.

It is encouraging users to switch to the new Microsoft Edge, which works across platforms and support extensions from multiple stores.

better online experiences

The new browser is said to enable better, more innovative online experiences.

“We believe that Microsoft 365 subscribers, in both consumer and commercial contexts, will be well served with this change through faster and more responsive web access to greater sets of features in everyday toolsets like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and more,” wrote Microsoft.

Even the not so old Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop app will be booted out by March 9, 2021.

The fall of IE is not unexpected. It rose by detroning Netscape in the late 1990s and remained unchallenged for nearly a decade — until it lost ground following the introduction of Chrome in 2008.