News

Internet Explorer Chief Dean Hachamovitch Leaving Microsoft

• By Gladys Rama
• December 19, 2014

Dean Hachamovitch, a 24-year Microsoft veteran and former corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, is leaving the company.

Hachamovitch announced his departure in a blog post on Thursday. "I'm ready to enjoy a different point of view on both tech and life, post-MSFT," he wrote. He will be joining LifeQ, a company that makes digital simulations of human physiological systems, as an advisor.

In an interview with GeekWire, Hachamovitch said that he was "overdue for a change" and that "[Microsoft] really has changed a lot."

Hachamovitch joined Microsoft in 1990 as part of the Office group, according to his LinkedIn profile, but moved to the Internet Explorer group in 2003 as general manager, later becoming its corporate vice president.

He oversaw the launch of multiple IE versions, from IE 6 through IE 11, during a period when the browser was being hammered by a combination of stagnant development and new rivals in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Microsoft undertook efforts to modernize its browser during Hachamovitch's stint as the IE chief, including supporting HTML 5.

In November 2013, Hachamovitch took a new post at Microsoft as its chief data scientist. The move was part of a reorganization spearheaded by Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Operating Systems group at Microsoft, according to reports.