Microsoft drops Internet Explorer brand

Internet Explorer, the Microsoft browser that is almost 20 years old, is to be killed off and replaced by a new operating system.

Microsoft has confirmed that its new browser, code-named Project Spartan, that is due to be unveiled later this year, will not use the familiar Internet Explorer name.

"We’re now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10," the company's marketing chief Chris Capossela told a conference.

Internet Explorer once dominated the market and had more than one billion users but it could not compete when Firefox and Google’s Chrome launched with faster technology and slicker design.

Microsoft is thought to be dropping the brand in a bid to shed “negative perceptions" gathered since its 1995 launch.

The software is known to be slow and has had various security problems.
The company has often talked about changing the browsers’ name to rejuvenate its reputation.
Nearly a decade ago, Dean Hachamovitch, the then-head of the IE business, is said to have told an industry conference: “We messed up.”
Windows 10 will feature a stripped down, faster browser more suited to multiple devices.
Tom Bedecarre, chairman of Akqa, a digital advertising agency, said the Internet Explorer brand was past its sell-by date.
“In the war of the future, which is mobile, they’re losing,” he told the Financial Times. “Nobody’s going to download Internet Explorer as their mobile browser.”
Despite the rebrand, a version of IE will be included in the next Windows launch as well as the Spartan browser, to aid companies that have developed software to work with the browser.