Oh yeah, I was in there too. We were all in, we grew into it online with Internet Explorer. Similar to Boris Becker with the AOL ad, rolling his eyes, in the late 1990s. Back when it wasn’t so common to be online 24/7. Therefore, it may be a bit melancholy when Microsoft is now calling it quits: Internet Explorer is history.

After 27 years, the US software giant has officially stopped supporting the web browser. Now there are no more updates for this. Whoever clicks on it will be redirected to Microsoft Edge, which is supposed to replace the old Explorer.

Another turning point. Okay, it’s not just melancholy. We have mixed feelings about this gateway to the (online) world. The first version of Internet Explorer was released in 1995. Many people – except perhaps AOL man Boris Becker – surfed the Internet with the Microsoft browser for the first time.

The relationship with Internet Explorer quickly became a love-hate relationship. Compared to other browsers, Explorer was considered slow, prone to technical problems.

How many times have we been about to pull the plug and throw the box against the wall. Everything at the beginning, everything to restart, if the PC screen said: “Serious exception error” or something like that. But you had to go back in again and again, with Internet Explorer, until word got around that it was the competition from Firefox or Chrome is much better and smoother and maybe a bit more likeable than the software mogul’s choice.

While Internet Explorer still had a market share of 90 percent in the early 2000s, its success has continued to decline in recent years. With a market share of almost 65 percent, Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser today. According to data from the website Statcounter, however, Internet Explorer recently had a global market share of 0.64 percent in the desktop browser segment. 0.64 percent!

What remains? Growing up with Microsoft. nostalgia within limits. After various Explorer versions, which we have accepted year after year without objection, like birthday cards from the health insurance company, it has to be over now. They came and went, versions 1, 2, 3 to 8, 9, 10 and 11, and finally we didn’t even bother with them anymore. Like many others out there.

Twitter said goodbye to Internet Explorer in a humorous way. “You took a long time to download stuff, you kept freezing and got replaced by other browsers pretty easily,” wrote one user. “But here goes one of the first browsers I ever used and I have a lot of good memories thanks to it.”

That’s true. But the digital transformation just eats its children. And with Chrome or Firefox (or Internet Edge, for that matter) we don’t have to ask as often: am I back in or what?