Well, I never thought I would be posting about this! According to stories now all over the internet Microsoft is killing Internet Explorer off due to it's negative brand image.
As a web developer I have been moaning about Internet Explorer for pretty much as long as I have been doing this job. When I was writing websites for IE6 and Netscape I remember complaining that IE6's rendering engine was so archaic and its JavaScript support was dodgy at best!
Then Firefox was released and IE was bugrudgingly updated to version 7, which finally added full CSS 2.0 support (at the same time as other browsers were toying with CSS 3). After that we had 8 which just seemed to fix some of the biggest issues with 7 (but then added some odd problems of its own, like removing support for CSS font-face without odd hacks).
I am going to go out on a limb now and say that I actually think that the latest verisions of IE (since 9) have not been that bad. I don't use them, as I don't use Windows but I have used 10 quite a bit and largley found it to be a not to painful experience, so I am not sure if Microsoft is really doing a good job here, considering the problems they have had with Vista and Windows 8 both being hated by their user base Microsoft don't always have a great track record in replacing an aging product with anything that is more modern, stable or easier to use.
What is also worth paying attention to is that Microsoft might be killing the brand, but not the product (not yet). How much of the new "project sparta" will be repurposed Internet Explorer?
You can see more information over on The Verge