Windows 7: Internet Explorer Turns 15 Just Ahead of IE9 Beta

Internet Explorer turns 15 in the month before Microsoft is scheduled to release the first Beta development milestone of Internet Explorer 9.

The Redmond company first release its browser as a rival to Netscape back in 1995, bundling it with the Windows operating system, and offering it free of charge.



Since then, the success of IE has pretty much been tied to that of Windows, reaching a peak of over 95% early in the past decade.

However, as Mozilla and additional rivals have started releasing competitive browsers, IE’s market share dominance has dwindled.

IE’s share of the browser market is now just 60.74%, with Firefox owning 22.91%, Chrome 7.16%, Safari 5.09%, and Opera 2.45%, according to statistics released by Net Applications.

Still, in the past months IE has turned back the tide, and started gaining market share at the expense of Firefox and Chrome.

They actually have me excited to try the new one. This is rare as I just eventually tried the other new ones (7, 8) after their releases.

However, they never really caught on to the extensions/add-ons like FF and Chrome did. MS in many recent years just didn't have its heart in IE and assumed it would dominate forever.

I am also excited about the new release but, as you say, they always lacked the extensions which makes Firefox number one browser for me. I mean one of the best extensions is Adblock, and IE has a huge problem with overflowing ads. Although research devoted to IE9 offers new milestones, I do not think they will be offering any extensions thingy.