As part of its plans to deprecate Internet Explorer, Microsoft will force certain URLs to open in Edge instead of IE, starting next month for most users
Here's the list of 1,156 sites you won't be able to open in Internet Explorer anymore. — Big changes are coming to Internet Explorer.
Context & Ripple Effects
This redirect is the enforcement layer of a retirement Microsoft has been assembling for years. It had already cut off older versions with the end of IE 8, 9, and 10 support, confirmed that Edge would not carry Silverlight forward, and in August 2020 announced IE 11 support ending for Teams and Microsoft 365 apps. Forcing 1,156 named URLs out of IE extends the squeeze from Microsoft's own apps to the open web.
What makes the move notable is the mechanism: rather than waiting for sites to drop IE themselves, Microsoft uses the browser to reroute traffic. The endpoint was already visible — the June 15, 2022 retirement announcement and the eventual disabling of the desktop app — but this step shows Microsoft willing to override user choice per-site to get there.
First-order effects
- Users opening any of the 1,156 listed sites in Internet Explorer will be redirected into Edge starting next month, whether or not they chose Edge as their browser.
- Enterprises still standardizing on IE 11 lose a workaround: sites on the list can no longer be held as evidence that IE must stay deployed.
Second-order effects
- Web teams operating those 1,156 sites can begin dropping IE-specific compatibility code and QA passes, since Microsoft has guaranteed their traffic arrives in Edge.
- Enterprise IT departments are pushed onto Edge's IE-mode compatibility path for remaining legacy intranet apps, consolidating browser management around a single Microsoft-controlled client.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft manages its browser platform through staged deprecations enforced from the OS side — the same playbook later applied when it moved to end Manifest V2 extension support in Edge following Chrome.
- The long-run structure is a browser market where Microsoft retires its own legacy engine entirely and competes within the Chromium ecosystem, with backward-compatibility decisions made centrally rather than left to individual sites.
The trend: Microsoft is dismantling Internet Explorer in deliberate stages — cutting app support, then redirecting specific sites, then disabling the app outright — shifting the Windows browser base onto Edge.