Support for Microsoft’s Edge browser is ending today – not the new Chromium-based, but the original Edge that was built as a replacement for Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft now calls it the Legacy Edge, and the company has announced that it will discontinue the product back in August. That day has finally come: Legacy Edge will no longer receive security updates and anyone who still uses it should start the process of moving to something else.
Legacy Edge was codenamed “Spartan” and was included in Windows 10 as the default browser for the operating system before it was officially called Edge. The Edge cloak is being adopted by Microsoft’s Chromium-based browser, which was in beta in 2019 and was officially launched in January 2020. This means that Edge (the former Edge) has survived just over a year along with its replacement . Microsoft also says that Legacy Edge will be removed automatically in the April update of Windows 10, with the new Edge installed in its place.
If you are responsible for your family’s technical support, it is worth checking with your relatives to make sure that Microsoft has successfully intimidated them into switching to the new Edge. If, in some way, it is not installed on your computers (or yours), you can download it directly from the Microsoft website.
Legacy Edge’s death is bittersweet in some ways. By most metrics, the new Edge is far superior, but it places the final nail in the coffin of Microsoft’s custom Web rendering engines, whose history goes back to early versions of Internet Explorer. It probably won’t be missed, due to its … performance, but it’s still the end of an era. The old Edge is officially gone, and the new Edge has completely replaced it.