Microsoft has discontinued Internet Explorer as of Thursday. This has created panic among many businesses and government agencies in Japan that waited to update their websites until the last minute.
Since April, Tokyo-based software developer Computer Engineering & Consulting has been flooded with requests for help, Nikkei Asia reports.
Those customers are mostly government agencies, financial institutions, and manufacturing and logistics companies that operate websites only compatible with Internet Explorer.
“Could you please do something, so we won’t have any problems?” one customer pleaded.
“They have known [about the phaseout] for a long time, but they must have postponed taking actions,” said a CEC official, who expects the chaos among the procrastinated customers to last for “a few months.”
Microsoft officially will halt support for Internet Explorer on Wednesday U.S. time after 27 years of service. Most of the users are heading towards Google Chrome.
A March survey by information technology resource provider Keyman’s Net revealed that many organizations in Japan depended on Internet Explorer, with 49% of respondents saying they used the browser for work.
They said the browser was used for employee attendance management, expenses settlement, and other internal tools. In some cases, they have no choice but to use Internet Explorer because of clients’ systems used to handle orders. Over 20% of these respondents did not know or had not figured out how to shift to other browsers after Internet Explorer’s retirement.
The Information Technology Promotion Agency has been asking Internet Explorer users to transition to other browsers and revise content fast.
The browser was launched in 1995. It became the global standard after beating Netscape in the browser wars and enjoyed a 65% market share as recently as January 2009. However, soon after, its share declined to less than 1% recently, according to web analytics company StatCounter.
One reason for the decline in Internet Explorer did not follow the international standards for web technologies.
“It didn’t work well with JavaScript and other programming languages that are necessary for creating interactive websites,” said Yota Egusa, the chief information security officer at computing service provider Sakura Internet.
The demise of Internet Explorer coincided with Chrome’s rapid rise. Launched in 2008 with Google’s open-source project as its base, Chrome attracted users with applications such as maps and email that run on the web and dominates the market today with a 65% share.
Chrome “is fast, and its frequent software updates mean security holes and bugs are addressed quickly,” said Masato Saito of ExaWizards, a developer of AI-enabled services.