Japan is still in shock after closing Internet Explorer (6 photos)

When did Microsoft announce that it would stop officially supporting Internet Explorer? Somewhere around 2022? And the Japanese are still worried about it every now and then. And in this regard, they are simply amazing (in their own weird way).





Japan and Explorer - one love for life

The Japanese and their favorite browser

There is a joke about Internet Explorer that it is only good for one thing: downloading another browser. And it is not very good even at this. Only about 5% of the world's Internet users used Internet Explorer in its final years. And it felt like they were all Japanese.

Many in the West tend to idolize Japan as a high-tech oasis. In fact, it is not. Remember how many offices in Japan still have fax machines? And they also use name stamps instead of signatures. Japan has a very strong "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.



Everyone in the world uses Chrome. Me too.

This applies to ALL walks of life. From home to business. Surprisingly, Japan has stimulated many innovations in manufacturing and science.

So they "got attached" to the old, but still working browser.

The thing is that in Japan, government websites were written in Web 2.0, when Internet Explorer was optimized for it to the maximum. And the Japanese have not changed their websites to this day, so they are STILL optimized for Internet Explorer.





Did anyone REALLY like it!?

And when a Japanese visits some trusted, favorite, traditional site from another browser, it “can’t handle such old stuff”. That is, if it displays it incorrectly or spoils the functionality.

When the browser was no longer supported, many learned that even the newest sites in Japan were optimized directly for Internet Explorer. For example, a government site with national identification numbers.



The Japanese love to load pages with text

According to the research company VALTES, in 2023 only 14% of the companies they surveyed reported that they had completed converting their sites for use by other browsers. 42% said the work was not yet finished. And a terrifying 15% admitted that they had not even started.



Ten years ago, Chinese sites seemed tacky to us, and now our ozones look like Chinese stores with banners and SPECIAL PRICES

But there is Microsoft Edge

Did you know that the new Microsoft browser has an "IE mode"? We bet you don't, ALL JAPANESE KNOW. At the same time, surfing the Internet in this mode is not safe, it does not have the same user protection as Chrome or Opera.

It's probably very easy for scammers to disturb Japanese data. But what kind of hacker would sit under Internet Explorer?



Faxes have been of no use to anyone for only 15 years, and you want the Japanese to forget the browser in 2 years!

Of course, Japanese companies are forced to switch to something new or make websites from scratch according to new standards. But they suffer greatly from this!