Internet Explorer has had a long and meme-full life, and it is way beyond time to move on. The browser is actively being replaced by the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser, and the company has made clear its intention of sunsetting IE 11 sooner rather than later. If you are still using Internet Explorer 11 for your browsing needs, Microsoft will now refuse to open certain incompatible websites, and will instead force-open them on Microsoft Edge.

According to a report from ZDNet, users trying to access certain websites on Internet Explorer will find that they can no longer do so. IE will refuse the load the URL, and it will automatically open the website in the Edge browser instead. This forced IE-to-Edge behavior is part of Microsoft's Internet Explorer deprecation plans and will be enabled with the release of Edge 87 that is scheduled for next month.

This behavior is enabled for only 1,1,56 websites and will be in force irrespective of whether you navigate to these sites through a hyperlink click or you manually enter the URL. Some of the entries in this list include YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, StackOverflow, StackExchange, GoDaddy, and more. The report provides a video to showcase the new forced behavior:

Internet Explorer will provide an explanation for why it couldn't load the website. Enterprise customers can change some aspects of this intrusive behavior. This change is also only present on computers where both Edge and IE are installed.

Considering how Internet Explorer has dropped off in popularity, this change does not really affect all that many users, of which retail consumers are even fewer. But just in case you are still holding on to Internet Explorer and not choosing to opt for Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome, know that your internet experience is likely to remain sub-par and even deteriorate over the coming weeks and months.