Internet Explorer gravestone goes viral in South Korea
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A South Korean engineer ordered a gravestone for the Internet Explorer and its photo went viral on the internet.
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A software engineer ordered a headstone for Internet Explorer which read: "He was a good tool to download other browsers."
Jung Ki-young, a South Korean software engineer, believes that Microsoft Corp's decision to retire the Internet Explorer web browser marked the end of a quarter-century of a love-hate relationship with technology. This is when he decided to commemorate the browser's demise by spending a month and 430,000 won ($330) to design and order a headstone with the browser's "e" logo above the epitaph: "He was a good tool to download other browsers."
The tombstone's photo went viral after a memorial that took place at a cafe run by his brother in the southern city of Gyeongju.
On Wednesday, Microsoft cut back support for Internet Explorer after a 27-year run, to focus on Microsoft Edge, its faster browser.
Jung commented on the memorial by saying it expressed his mixed feelings for the older software, mainly since it played such a big part in his carer.
"It was a pain in the ass, but I would call it a love-hate relationship because Explorer itself once dominated an era," he told Reuters.
He said it took him longer to make sure his sites and online apps worked with Explorer than with other browsers.
His clients, he added, kept asking him to make sure their websites looked good in Explorer, which remained for years the default browser in South Korea's government offices and many banks.
World's leading browser for more than decade
Explorer became the world's main browser for more than a decade after it was launched in 1995; it was bundled with the operating system of Microsoft's Windows and was pre-installed in billions of computers.
In the late 2000s, it started losing out to Google Chrome and became the topic of countless internet memes, with some developers suggesting it was sluggish compared with its rivals.
Jung's purpose for the gravestone was to give people a laugh, as he said, but was not expecting the joke would go that far.
"That's another reason for me to thank the Explorer, it has now allowed me to make a world-class joke," he said.
"I regret that it's gone, but won't miss it. So its retirement, to me, is a good death."
