No seriously, Internet Explorer really is being retired on June 15, warns Microsoft

In this photo illustration Google's Chrome browser shortcut, Google Inc.'s new Web browser, is displayed next to Mozilla Firefox shortcut and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser shortcut, on an laptop. — (Image credit: Alexander Hassenstein, Getty Images)

It's time to wave goodbye to Internet Explorer. No, for real this time. Those other send-offs were just preliminary. Okay, yes, Internet Explorer's demise has been a long time coming, and we've known IE is destined for the great recycle bin in the sky since last year, but Microsoft has warned again that it really is 100%, definitely, getting rid of that IE desktop shortcut on June 15, 2022.

Microsoft has renewed warnings to users that it is retiring IE's desktop application on most recent versions of Windows 10 from June. Anyone still using IE after that time might get away with it for a little while longer, though Microsoft plans to update PCs to actually be rid of the application altogether shortly thereafter.

Edge will be taking over all default internet-browsing operations for the Windows OS, and to be honest that's not a terrible thing. While I'm still not a huge fan of Microsoft's style of pushing Edge onto users, such as in the Windows search function, it's not actually that bad of a browser since it made the change to become Chromium-based, the same basis for Google Chrome.

We even have a member of staff on team who uses Edge every day and swears by it—we tend to ignore them but the browser has its fans (remember, I'm still your boss, Jacob -Ed).

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Chrome is massively popular, of course, and very few internet-going users use any other browser as it stands today. It's won the browser war, for now, but there are still great options our there. I'm more of a Firefox user myself, and do recommend that browser for anyone in need of a new web-browsing stomping ground. It also tended to use the least amount of RAM while in use, as we discovered in testing to find the best web browser for gamers.

For those active users and businesses still relying on Internet Explorer in 2022, which really shouldn't be many, Microsoft is keeping an Internet Explorer mode in Edge to ensure compatibility with all the weirdness that IE demands. This mode will be available up until 2029.

Internet Explorer is also set to be pulled from Windows 8 and Windows 7 in January of next year, but honestly unless you have an exceptionally good reason to be running those operating systems in 2022, you're really taking the mickey.

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.