In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft's non-Windows revenues for the software. Mosaic, an early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneering NCSA Mosaic browser. The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon, using source code from Spyglass, Inc. 6.1 Market share history overview by year and version.5.2 Vulnerability exploited in attacks on U.S.Windows 11 dropped support for Internet Explorer 11 in favor of Microsoft Edge in 2021. Internet Explorer 11 was still included, but was meant to be used for sites that do not work properly with the new rendering engine in Microsoft Edge. Windows 10 comes with a new web browser called Microsoft Edge.

Versions of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also been produced, including an embedded OEM version called Internet Explorer for Windows CE (IE CE), available for WinCE based platforms and currently based on IE6 Internet Explorer for Pocket PC, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile, which is made for Windows Mobile and Windows CE and remains in development alongside the more advanced desktop versions and the discontinued Internet Explorer for Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX ( Solaris and HP-UX). Internet Explorer was originally planned to be removed from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in Europe, but Microsoft later dropped the plans, and instead included a browser ballot screen with the products, allowing users to select a different web browser if they wish. The latest release is Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft spent over $100 million per year on IE in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on it by 1999. Since its peak of popularity, its usage share has decreased to 55% due to rival web browsers, and is slowly trending downward. IE has been the most popular web browser since 1999, with up to 95% usage share during 2002/2003 with IE5 and IE6.

Later versions were free downloads, or in service packs, and included in releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.

It was first released as part of the add-on package Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95, that year.

It was part of the Microsoft Windows operating system, starting in 1995. Internet Explorer ( IE) formerly known as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, was a series of graphical web browsers made by Microsoft.

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