Internet Explorer shuts down in burst of 1990s era nostalgia

It was Aug. 16, 1995. “Waterfalls” by TLC was the No. 1 song in the country. Bill Clinton was in the White House. And Microsoft introduced a new way to surf the web: Internet Explorer.

It was buggy and slow, many said. But it was always there. Until it wasn’t. On Wednesday, the web browser, loved and loathed by a generation, was officially retired, swept into the dustbin of internet history.

The occasion stirred surprisingly strong feelings of nostalgia for the 1990s, an era when many first came to know the online world through stuttering dial-up connections, chat rooms and long-gone social media sites like Friendster.

Now that Internet Explorer is no more, many pined for a time when the little blue icon with the lowercase “e” was their escape route out of childhood bedrooms, college dorm rooms and office cubicles.

“Even though I don’t use it anymore, I’m still going to miss the idea of it,” said Brett Babino, 27, an Amazon worker from Port Arthur, Texas, who was 11 when he started using Internet Explorer to do schoolwork and play online games like Club Penguin.

“It was slow,” Mr. Babino said, “but it got me through a lot of things.”

He was among many who were greeting the death of Internet Explorer on Wednesday by fondly recalling how essential it once was, despite its many faults. Memes and jokes featuring tombstones and grim reapers abounded.

“Today marks the official end of Microsoft’s support for Internet Explorer,” Marques Brownlee, a web video producer, wrote on Twitter. “RIP to the #1 Chrome installer of all time.”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab offered its condolences.

“Rest in peace, Internet Explorer,” it wrote on Twitter. “You’ll be missed. We feel old.”

Michael L. Nelson, a computer science professor at Old Dominion University, said Microsoft’s decision to shut down Internet Explorer and move users to its newer browser, Edge, “marks the end of an era.”

Internet Explorer’s inclusion in the ubiquitous Windows operating system and the requirement that it be used on certain government websites made the browser an inescapable part of daily life for millions, he said.

It also hastened the demise of Netscape Navigator, the world’s first commercial web browser.

In the 1990s, Microsoft was forced to defend Internet Explorer in a major antitrust case brought by the Justice Department.