微軟擬讓IE瀏覽器退休 全新瀏覽器擬改名轉運

It was once used by nearly 1bn people, making it one of the world’s best-known technology brands. But even Microsoft, its maker, has been forced to admit that it is deeply unloved.

它一度有近10億名用戶，使得它成爲全世界最知名的科技品牌之一。但現在就連它的開發者微軟(Microsoft)也被迫承認，它非常不受喜愛。

Internet Explorer — the software that launched the browser wars of the 1990s and became a symbol of the Seattle company’s former stranglehold on the tech world — is about to be ushered into retirement.

Internet Explorer（簡稱IE）即將被退休。這款軟件曾引發上世紀90年代的瀏覽器大戰，成爲總部位於西雅圖的微軟曾經把持科技世界的標誌。

The group said this week it would not use the IE name for the new browser it plans to deliver with the next version of its Windows operating system, due this year. The revised software, codenamed Project Spartan, is intended to catapult Microsoft beyond the Web 1.0 world for which IE was designed.

微軟本週表示，定於今年推出的下一版Windows操作系統自帶的新瀏覽器將不再使用IE這個名字。新的瀏覽器代號Project Spartan，微軟意圖憑藉這款新瀏覽器跳出IE面向的Web 1.0世界。

With Spartan, Microsoft hopes to vault past IE’s weaknesses to produce a browser that is more suited to a digital life lived on multiple devices — part of the strategy of new chief executive Satya Nadella to break the company’s reliance on its old personal-computer monopoly.

微軟希望憑藉Spartan一舉超越IE的弱點，開發出一款更適合多設備數字生活的瀏覽器，這是新任首席執行官薩蒂亞•納德拉(Satya Nadella)戰略的一部分，目的是打破微軟對自己過去壟斷個人計算機(PC)的依賴。

Tom Bedecarre, chairman of Akqa, a digital advertising agency owned by WPP, said the 20-year-old brand was long past its sell-by date. “In the war of the future, which is mobile, they’re losing. Nobody’s going to download Internet Explorer as their mobile browser.”

WPP旗下的數字廣告公司Akqa的董事長湯姆•貝德卡雷(Tom Bedecarré)表示，IE這個已經20歲的品牌早已過了保質期。“在面向未來的這場移動戰爭中，它們不斷失去地盤。沒人會下載IE作爲自己移動設備上的瀏覽器。”

Microsoft has admitted that it failed to make IE a more loved part of daily life over the years. It even resorted to self-mockery in some of its advertising, referring to it as “The Browser You Loved To Hate”. Nearly a decade ago, Dean Hachamovitch, then head of the IE business, confessed: “We messed up.”

微軟承認這些年來它未能使IE成爲人們日常生活中一個更受喜愛的部分。它在一些廣告中甚至自嘲IE，稱其是“那款你喜歡痛恨的瀏覽器”。近10年前，當時的IE業務負責人迪安•哈查莫維奇(Dean Hachamovitch)就承認：“我們搞砸了。”

“It’s been a product problem for a long time,” said Dan Brewster, a senior interactive designer with Wolff Olins, the marketing agency. People used it, he added, only because it was pre-installed on their computers or because they were required to by their employers.

市場營銷公司沃爾夫•奧林斯(Wolff Olins)的高級交互設計師丹•布魯斯特(Dan Brewster)說：“這款產品早就有問題了。”他補充說，人們以往之所以使用它，只不過是因爲他們的電腦上預裝了它，或他們的僱主要求使用它。

Designed to counter the rise of browser pioneer Netscape at the dawn of the internet, IE was delivered free with the pervasive Windows operating system, a tactic that made Microsoft the target of an antitrust investigation.

IE是在互聯網誕生初期，爲對抗早年大受歡迎的瀏覽器網景(Netscape)而設計的，微軟將它預裝在普及率極高的Windows操作系統上，這種做法曾讓微軟成爲反壟斷調查的對象。

It overtook Netscape within three years and went on to account for an estimated 95 per cent of browser usage soon after the turn of the millennium. But first the open-source Firefox browser and then Google’s Chrome ate into IE’s market share. It has fallen to about 20 per cent, similar to Firefox, while Chrome has risen to nearly 50 per cent.

IE在不到3年的時間裏就超過了網景瀏覽器，到千禧之交後不久，IE據估計已佔到瀏覽器市場的95%。但開源瀏覽器火狐(Firefox)和谷歌(Google)的Chrome，先後開始蠶食IE的市場份額。IE的市場佔有率已降至約20%，跟火狐差不多，Chrome的市場佔有率則升至近50%。