Internet Explorer, the web browser from Microsoft was released 15 years old. Although in time this web browser had many ups and downs, the most controversial version, Internet Explorer 6, had many security bugs, becoming one of the most criticized web browsers.

Still, Internet Explorer remains one of the most popular web browsers in the world.

The fist Internet Explorer version made it’s debut on August 16, 1995 and it was based on Mozaic, a web browser which Microsoft licensed from a company named SpyGlass, Inc.

Starting with the 3.0 version, Microsoft started to include Internet Explorer in Windows Distributions, increasing the browser’s market share significantly and this way managing to completely remove the domination of the Netscape Navigator browser.

However, the popularity of Internet Explorer started to decrease with the appearance of Firefox, in 2004, mainly because Internet Explorer 6 had a lot of security bugs.

After 2 years of negligence, Microsoft started to work hard on Internet Explore and the 7h version was released with significant improvements compared to the previous one. Internet Explorer 7 received many security improvements but also usability ones.

According to the latest information provided by research companies, Internet Explorer has a 60.74% market share, followed by Firefox which has 23.75%, Chrome, Safari, Opera and others.

Currently, Microsoft is getting ready to release another chapter in the history of Internet Explorer: The IE 9 version. The first beta version of the browser is scheduled to be released on September 15, during an event in San Francisco.

Internet Explorer is one of the most important Microsoft products, so we can’t hardly wait to see what they got in store for us next.