[throwaway128128]

Explorer didn't need "slowing down". It was in maintenance mode and being developed it on a shoestring budget around the days of IE6-IE7. Microsoft apparently decided that the web browser circa 2006 was essentially a finished product because they had "won" - IE had no serious mass market competition on Windows.

[robocat]

Somewhere mid-2000s Microsoft recognised web applications were an existential threat to their Windows Applications monopoly. Presumably after IE5 when they first introduced XMLHttpRequest as an ActiveX control (or was that infighting? It was released for online mail AFAIK). Did that have anything to do with the slow down in development of IE?

[Kerrick]

They weren’t wrong. Electron apps and web apps have made switching to Linux or Mac much more seamless for many people.

[marcosdumay]

Well, the fact that everybody though the same, and this was hyped at the Netscape marketing material surely helped making their mind.

And once they destroyed Netscape, Sun created Java with the same goal.

[ido]

And Sun sued Microsoft when they tried to EEE Java shortly thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigatio...

[corybrown]

You're basically right, though the IE dev team was effectively disbanded in 2002 so it's even earlier then you mentioned

[phendrenad2]

Reminds me of Teams in 2023.

[andirk]

Is Teams a pile now? The dot going yellow when I was playing golf instead of pretending to work really bothered me.