That’s it, since yesterday, Wednesday June 15, Microsoft stopped tracking Internet Explorer. After 27 years of service, the famous browser from the Redmond company will no longer be supported by the latest versions of Windows. A problematic situation in Japan, where many companies and government departments still depend on Internet Explorer.
Companies waited until the last minute
Nikkei Asia reported that the end of Internet Explorer caused a sense of panic among Japanese organizations who waited until the last minute to update their websites. Computer Engineering & Consulting (CEC), a software development company based in Tokyo, says it has been overwhelmed with requests for help since April.
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Among its clients are government agencies, financial institutions as well as production and logistics companies. These actors of Japanese economic life still have a website only available via Internet Explorer. It might lead to malfunction of their activities if they don’t switch browsers quickly.
” They’ve known it for a long time, but they had to push back their action take “says a representative of CEC. The IT company expects chaos to reign among those who have procrastinated for a few months.
49% of Japanese employees use Internet Explorer
According to a survey conducted in March by Keyman’s Net, a Japanese specialist in information technology, many companies still depend on Internet Explorer. The study shows that 49% of employees still use Microsoft’s old browser for work.
In some companies, Internet Explorer is even used to monitor employee attendance, expense settlement and other internal tools. More than 20% of respondents did not know that Internet Explorer would soon disappear and that a transition had to be made.
While the online public procurement information portal, which allows you to make calls for tenders, will change browsers at the last minute, many other government agencies are slow to react. This is the case of the Japanese pension service, for example, whose applications can only be viewed on Internet Explorer. While waiting for the service to adapt, you have to go through Microsoft Edge’s Internet Explorer mode to access it. This mode was precisely designed by Microsoft to give a slight reprieve to websites that will sooner or later have to adapt to newer browsers. A sigh of relief must have sounded in Japan at this announcement.