So farewell at last, Internet Explorer. May your light blue E of slow, buggy truth never be untouched on our taskbars anymore.

That’s the news coming out of Microsoft’s horse-like mouth anyway. Chris Capossela made the announcement at a conference yesterday afternoon, informing those in attendance that Windows 10 will by and large be free from the much-maligned browser. A replacement, currently codenamed Project Spartan, will be rolled out.

Microsoft’s mercy killing of IE could be seen as part of a shift towards a more user-friendly recognition ploy. The browser was steam-rolled by its competitors – Chrome, Firefox, Mozilla and the myriad open source alternatives – and became either the refuge of silver surfers or the only means with which to download any of its rivals.

But that wasn’t the case up until as recent as October 2012, when IE was still the most widely-used browser. Even then we knew it sucked. Even Microsoft did; an ad run in the same year saw the company facing up to their product’s total lack of self-esteem and public empathy:

In a little over two years IE had been choked out like some unworthy UFC fighter. Clicking on the blue symbol simply became a matter of waiting for it to load before x-ing out again. It’s like losing a distant relative you never actually met – a great aunt on your dad’s side who moved to Alaska after blah blah blah – you might feel a twinge of something, but there was never any real connection in the first place.

Older and veteran web users may feel something a little more than that, but it really is time to move on.