Here’s the death of Internet Explorer illustrated in one GIF

I still have a good chuckle at Microsoft’s expense every now and then when I remember how far Internet Explorer has fallen over the past few years. Once the undisputed king of web browsers, Internet Explorer has since fallen far behind the likes of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and a person by the name of Jody Sieradzki has been kind enough to create a GIF that illustrates its demise over the years. 

Somewhere deep in the cobweb-filled recesses of your brain, you might remember a time when checking your email meant booting up Internet Explorer. But as this infographic shows, it wasn’t long ago that the world was filled with Internet Explorers. Then, a couple years back, nearly every country switched to Chrome. The visualization below, which colors countries based on the most popular desktop and tablet internet browser of the year, was created by Jody Sieradzki using data from the web tracker Stat Counter. The widespread switch from Internet Explorer to Chrome is fascinating to watch, but so are some of the other regional patterns: Opera, for instance, had a brief moment of glory in Russia and former USSR countries six years back, while Firefox swept across Asia and Africa in 2011 and 2012 before getting dethroned by Chrome. In 2014, the two people living in Greenland decided to give Safari a go.