Internet Explorer shuts after 27 years, trouble builds for Japan businesses

Businesses across the country are now having to move swiftly to ensure they're still able to run operations that previously relied on apps built atop Microsoft's long-tenured browser

Microsoft Corp. retired its Internet Explorer on Wednesday, putting an end to a quarter-century-old app while also sparking a small panic among businesses and government agencies that built internal systems around the unpopular browser.
 

Japan may be the country most affected by the move, as a survey in March found that 49% of companies in the Asian nation still use IE. Among them, the most common use was for in-house management, data exchange and accounting systems. All of those should have been updated or transitioned to different software in the time since Microsoft announced its IE retirement plans a year