微软拟让IE浏览器退休 全新浏览器拟改名转运

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10亿名用户，使得它成为全世界最知名的科技品牌之一。但现在就连它的开发者微软(Microsoft)也被迫承认，它非常不受喜爱。

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（简称IE）即将被退休。这款软件曾引发上世纪90年代的浏览器大战，成为总部位于西雅图的微软曾经把持科技世界的标志。

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.

微软本周表示，定于今年推出的下一版Windows操作系统自带的新浏览器将不再使用IE这个名字。新的浏览器代号Project Spartan，微软意图凭借这款新浏览器跳出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.

微软希望凭借Spartan一举超越IE的弱点，开发出一款更适合多设备数字生活的浏览器，这是新任首席执行官萨蒂亚•纳德拉(Satya Nadella)战略的一部分，目的是打破微软对自己过去垄断个人计算机(PC)的依赖。

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旗下的数字广告公司Akqa的董事长汤姆•贝德卡雷(Tom Bedecarré)表示，IE这个已经20岁的品牌早已过了保质期。“在面向未来的这场移动战争中，它们不断失去地盘。没人会下载IE作为自己移动设备上的浏览器。”

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.”

微软承认这些年来它未能使IE成为人们日常生活中一个更受喜爱的部分。它在一些广告中甚至自嘲IE，称其是“那款你喜欢痛恨的浏览器”。近10年前，当时的IE业务负责人迪安•哈查莫维奇(Dean Hachamovitch)就承认：“我们搞砸了。”

“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.

市场营销公司沃尔夫•奥林斯(Wolff Olins)的高级交互设计师丹•布鲁斯特(Dan Brewster)说：“这款产品早就有问题了。”他补充说，人们以往之所以使用它，只不过是因为他们的电脑上预装了它，或他们的雇主要求使用它。

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是在互联网诞生初期，为对抗早年大受欢迎的浏览器网景(Netscape)而设计的，微软将它预装在普及率极高的Windows操作系统上，这种做法曾让微软成为反垄断调查的对象。

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年的时间里就超过了网景浏览器，到千禧之交后不久，IE据估计已占到浏览器市场的95%。但开源浏览器火狐(Firefox)和谷歌(Google)的Chrome，先后开始蚕食IE的市场份额。IE的市场占有率已降至约20%，跟火狐差不多，Chrome的市场占有率则升至近50%。