Internet Explorer is retired. Be honest, if you hadn't been told, how long would it have taken you to find out in your normal computer usage? Would you have ever found out?
In 2004, IE's popularity peaked with 94% of the browser market, beating out Netscape, the dominant 90s browser, into oblivion by bundling it with Windows by default. But the decline began not long after. Between 2011 and 2021 Internet Explorer went from a market share of 39% down to 0.6%, which is a pretty steep decline, and also where the market share sits today.
This decline was driven by quicker and easier browsing experiences users got with Firefox and later, Chrome.
It seems, Microsoft never really fought for their browser dominance after they'd lost it, as time has gone on, updates to functionality. Allowing, and recently even encouraging Internet Explorer to fade into obscurity so they can focus attention on Edge.
What happens now for the 0.64% of us who still use Internet Explorer? (Which is still 28 million people, mind you) If you have an older computer running something like XP, you may still be able to use Internet Explorer as your browser, but, if it glitches (and the constantly evolving internet will make this a certainty) there won't ever be a fix for it.
If you use internet explorer in the office, and your work computers are running Windows 10 or 11, there won't be an internet explorer there for you to use anymore, Edge will load. IE has continued usage as certain legacy applications that organisations use won't run on modern browser engines, and if this sounds like you, Microsoft's Edge will have an "IE mode" for loading certain content that can't be loaded by Edge or other modern browsers.
Back in the 1990's, Microsoft won the first browser war by making Internet Explorer free and bundled with every copy of windows (before this, Netscape was paid-for software) Internet Explorer set the standard of browsers being free and easily accessible to everyone with a computer, which fundamentally changed the course of technology.
So it might be gone, it's impact isn't.