This has not been the greatest start to the year for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Days after news of the latest security flaw in Internet Explorer, Google is adding fuel to the fire by phasing out support for IE6 for two of its Google Apps products, Docs and Sites (which recently got an aesthetic upgrade).
For both the consumer and enterprise versions of Google Docs and Sites, the only browsers that will be fully compatible are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. The phase out will take place beginning March 1. While you’ll still be able to access Docs and Sites from IE6, you will have restricted functionality and many features won’t work, making the applications for the most part useless. We hear that Google will be phasing out IE6 support for the remainder of Google’s major products, including Gmail and Calendar, over the coming year. This isn’t Google’s first move to phases out IE6 functionality for its products. Last July, the search giant began phasing out YouTube support for the Microsoft browser. For users of IE6, the online video site began pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives. A similar prompt will now take place on Docs and Sites for users who are browsing from IE6.
For the most part, the tech community, including web developers and designers, tend to have a profound dislike of Internet Explorer 6. Obviously, the browse has many issues, including low performance and major security flaws. Even Microsoft itself, is recommending that all its customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the browser which has better security in place. The main reason why IE6 is still being used at all is because of corporate IT departments across the globe needing to make upgrade decisions. Unfortunately, a number of these companies still have to use the browser because they have systems in place built specifically to run with it. To add insult to injury, IE6 continues to lose market share in the browser world.
And Google isn’t the only technology company that is looking to close off support for IE6. Digg has hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. I have a feeling that as Google joins the web in gathering pitchforks around IE6, more companies will flock to join the movement.
Profofraed yoru psots nxet tme pleaes.
Be less helpful next time please.
“Obviously, the browse has many issues” -> browser
“Even Microsoft itself, is recommending” -> no comma
“Facebook also has I have a feeling that as Google joins” -> Either finish the sentence, or cut “Facebook also has”
That’s all I found. Hope that helps, Leena.
To E,
At least come with something fresh if you’re going to try to be funny.
Yes, let me go through and fix the post for her point-by-point while I hold her hand and frolic through the bushes. This isn’t Wikipedia.
Try less hard next time when trying to troll.
Agreed, a professional blog should at least attempt to appear professional.
This is a professional blog? I didn’t notice…
Gee, this ‘E’ remind me of those ‘low-life’ grammar and compo instructor who thinks the whole world revolves on spelling… Get a life…!
As for the post, IE 6 should be banned from using, not a mere “putting it on the grave” its very cumbersome to use now.. And that’s why Google has Google docs now, doesn’t it?
Details of google docs: http://bit.ly/google-docs-competition-details
Tom,
In your comment:
“Either finish the sentence, or cut “Facebook also has”
Why is the unnecessary comma coming before the “or”?
So, you aren’t perfect after all.
Be more considerate next time. Blogs are being published at a blazing speed. So, you can expect a typo here and there. No one is immune to such minor errors. That includes you and me.
“Blogs are being published at a blazing speed. So, you can expect a typo here and there.”
Redundant period and comma placed on purpose then?
The comma is not strictly necessary, true, but it’s perfectly good style to place a comma before a conjunction separating independent clauses. In fact, doing so is one of the first few guidelines in “The Elements of Style” (aka Strunk & White).
“Be less helpful next time please.”
That’s gonna be hard. Maybe if he just wrote “first!” ?
“Google Twists Knife In IE6, Pulls Support From Docs And Sites”
I feel Firefox is a safe alternative.
“Firefox 3.6 has been downloaded…
24,616,319
times since January 21, 2010″ – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/stats/
Visit the IE6 grave. Pay your tributes to IE6 at http://www.ie6grave.com. Its fun how you can either leave flowers, or pound an iron stake to prevent IE6 from rising back again from the dead.
Thank god, Microsoft needs to just cut the cord already. This thing is on life support and it’s costing the family too much money!
Install ie 8.0 is better and faster.
Go for the Chrome and discover browser speed for real…extensions do help… in fact you can have the best of both the browsers (IE & Chrome) by installing the IE tab extension that comes for the Chrome browser. Though you may see scary standard warnings while you install extensions.
Microsoft did cut the cord on IE6. The company has been recommending upgrades for a couple of years, and has been pushing people to IE8.
Now if they just cut support for all IE versions, that would be news.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s lifecycle policy prevents totally dropping support for it until 2014. Since it shipped with Windows XP, it falls under component lifecycle. That means that it inherits the lifecycle of the product it shipped with and won’t be considered out of support until XP is fully retired (which isn’t until 2014).
The number of corporate web apps that rely on the holes and flaws in IE6 saddens me. Instead of continuing to take advantage of those flaws, those apps need to be updated to work on browsers that were made within the past few years.
It’s about time. They need to speed it up!
The web UI folk should be happy!
Good riddance! Props to Google for doing this. Check out 10 of the funniest IE6 dismissal message ever (NSFW language) http://emotify.com/acy149/
your link is full of lamesaucebullshit.
as member of the military with a work PC that still has IE6, this kind of blows. We have tried to tell our ITs that we need a new browser fast but it’s such a high command call that by the time someone makes a decision upgrade, we’ll already be using IE10. We’re not the only ones too. It just sucks that until something goes wrong, that’s when people make decisions. No preperation. Hmph.
As a member of the military, I would think that security would be a high priority for your higher-ups. Your IT’s maybe need the right reason, and for your line of work, I’d say tow the ’security’ line rather than ’stuff just doesn’t look as pretty’.
IE 6 is one of the worst browsers in the world!
no shit sherlock
Google is just putting their weight behind your attempts to communicate to IT how absurd it is that they’re still using IE6. I bet once Gmail stops working, IT will get many times the complaints that come in right now, and eventually they’ll be forced to do something about it.
Perhaps they’ll even consider cutting off the contractors that have been sucking money while managing to pretend to do something worthwhile and stifle the upgrade to a modern browser for the last 10 years.
Gmail in a corporate environment? Not where I work. That is a serious security no, no. Besides, they complain about IE7 enough as it is.
Does anybody actually use ie6? I mean, seriously, it’s 20 & eff’ing 10. Wouldn’t this be news if it were 2004?
In my sites, IE6 still beats out Safari, Chrome, and Opera — in a couple of the sites, combined.
The only browsers that get more play are IE7/IE8 and Firefox.
Basically that just tells you about the demographic that visits your site, i.e. non-tech people.
asdfg, you might want to google “Shelley Powers” before you jump to any conclusions.
Yes, as Joe notes, I tend to have a tech person…or two…visit now and again.
But it’s non-tech people who will not upgrade or update, who will get viruses and who will be spreading them around
Yup – most of my sites (corporate) still rack up 10% for IE6, which, as Shelley mentioned, is more than Safari, Chrome and Opera.
sadly, our site is a mixed bag of users and our stats say a lot about that:
IE 8.0 47.18% ; IE 7.0 36.57% ; IE 6.0 16.21%; IE 5.5 0.05%
Actually, some of us work for major corporations that force us to use IE 6 on our work machines to much chagrin.
I honestly don’t get how you write these articles… Why not say that it is also putting a knife in the back of FireFox 2.x users. What makes IE6 so special that Google is putting a knife in Microsoft’s back?
And why is it a knife in the back to begin with? Statistics (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) show that IE6 is being phased out gradually over the last year or so. As its percentages go down, IE7 and IE8 are going up. Also, this is a browser that was released 10 years ago.
This isn’t a backstabbing. It is a software company choosing to not support a product that is ancient and does not support the technology needed to run Google’s software or requires special development to do.
This is just sensationalism journalism.
My thoughts exactly.
Yup, well said.
Because IE6 was developed 9 years ago and Microsoft did nothing about it after it won the browser war. Web developers wanted to do more with there websites but couldn’t since Microsoft only cares about there own standards.
At that time people had to hack there own websites to make it work with IE6. This is the reason Flash exists, it was never meant to replace HTML like today.
Now that web developers can finally do more with HTML, they don’t need to rely on 3rd-party plugins as much as they did before. Which is why people are putting up pitch forks for Microsoft to end support for good.
When IE6 was released, there was no such thing as web standards. Sure, people spoke about it and Mozilla tried its best to release a browser that “was pure” but the reality of it was that IE6 was an outstanding achievement that allowed many enterprise businesses to build applications that were able to pull in information from external sources, create complex user interfaces, and provide the average user a much better experience than standard HTML 3.2 which was less than adequate for anything. Chrome, Safari, and all of the other browsers which claim that they pioneered web standards did not even exist when IE6 was released.
Software development does not begin by coding. It begins with Product Managers determining feature sets and requirements. Those are generally driven by customer input. Many of the features of IE6 were such features. They were requested. Microsoft was also at the point where they could drive innovation in browser technologies. Once used in enterprise companies, Microsoft could not change IE whenever some pure web standards guy wanted a change made. Remember that this was 10 years ago. SOAP, Web Services, etc did not exist as they do today.
Also, Flash was not developed as a hack. Adobe developed it as a write once, run anywhere engine. Same thing as Java. Is Java a hack because Microsoft languages only worked on Windows OSs at the time?
Finally, developers were always able to do more with HTML. Javascript engines existed in IE6 as they do today and many sites 10 years ago used JavaScript as a way of enabling and creating rich user experiences on the web. There were many companies that offered Javascript libraries that supported both IE and Firefox.
Google is removing support because it is playing a political game with Microsoft. In reality, it won’t make much of a dent for enterprises still using IE6. The reality is that most enterprises will not use Google Docs as a Microsoft Office replacement regardless of the cost due to variety of issues. Smaller business have already upgraded because they generally do not need IE6. This is just a political move to “drive a knife…”
Its too bad that a site such as TechCrunch will reduce itself to a National Enquirer level when it comes to tech reporting. “Murder on the Net”…
OH boy, Wall-O-Text. Yes. Chrome, Safari, and others came during the next 5 years. However, during the first you have no idea how many times I’ve seen hacks (flash not included) made in order to have there site render perfectly in IE6.
What I meant was people had hack there websites by implanting extra code in order to make render correctly under IE6. Flash was an easy work around to a headache inducing process.
Also Your right Javascript did exist at that time but didn’t do nearly as much as we do today with the help newer standards. Otherwise it wouldn’t be called “Web 2.0″ Now we have things like , , and other tags that were impossible to do at the time or involved more labor trying to implant since you still needed some random plugin.
Even if it is due to “political” reasons, it still comes down to the fact that Microsoft failed to deliver on a decade old browser. Otherwise they would have never made the move in the first place. Also the world does not revolve around Microsoft. I mean look at Windows Mobile.
Microsoft has delivered. It is called IE7 and IE8.
Why are we not scolding apple for not continuing to update OS/X on PowerPC? Is it not the same situation? Developers will have to write different code to make the same app work on both products? As someone who has a 4 year old iMac, I am not too happy with the fact that I can not run Adobe’s CS4 on it. But then I remember that it is a product that is old and the technology and architecture has evolved.
I find it funny that people are always pointing their fingers at Microsoft for this. Every technology company has done this in the past. The difference is that Microsoft has chosen to take the path of not forcing users to upgrade. Companies such as Apple require users to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of their software. Try to use the latest version of the iPhone OS with iTunes 7. You can’t and good luck trying to do so. Try to downgrade OS/X after applying an update. Again, good luck. The average user can not do so regardless of the issues that they have with the update.
When it comes down to it, web applications are no different than desktop applications and should not be. Just like a desktop app developer has to take into account different variations in the machine, a web developer should take into account variations in its platform which is the browser that runs it.
Years ago, I argued that Web Development was a step backwards in development because it took developmental concepts and threw them out the window. Now I realize that a byproduct is that it also created lazy developers who truly want to write once and run everywhere. That is a pipe dream that Java tried to sell and could not. Eventually, the same lesson will be learned in Web Development.
We can all strive for a better future and as technology evolves, it will become possible. Technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, and HTML 5 will get there, but to fault a company and browser 10 years old is not going to get us any further.
Up to 1996, companies had different data representation methods and formats. It took more than 40 years for a standard to be created (EDI) and implemented and it is still not perfect. HIPPA is another example. Anyone looking for perfection is going to get disappointed.
“Even if it is due to “political” reasons, it still comes down to the fact that Microsoft failed to deliver on a decade old browser. Otherwise they would have never made the move in the first place. Also the world does not revolve around Microsoft. I mean look at Windows Mobile.”
just like to world doesn’t evolve around any of the other tech companies. like jim if the companies wanted to leave ie6 then they would. and no ms hasn’t failed. i haven’t been an ie6 user in a long time but i noticed a couple years ago that it was running on all the computers in my school and since our school was by the district headquarters i checked there too and all their comps run ie6. i’m not sure if that allowed us to hack into our teachers and admin comps more, but if it did then god bless ie6 (and i don’t say that much). anyways once i noticed that i told all my teachers that i refused to attend a school running ie6 and i showed them how easy it was for us to get around all the security measures they set up for the students and how we were basically exploiting the admin’s privacy by breaking into emails, and they heard me and the rest of the student body and they changed. so now they upgrade all the time. people aren’t that stupid. yeah a lot of the so called general public is lazy by nature and most buy pc’s/laptops that run windows on it and we get all the extra crap that we might not use, but people don’t care. they just want everything to work. it’s a hassle for everyone else when we think about businesses and industry/institutions that use ie6 but it’s really an ongoing whining that shouldn’t be encouraged by a post like this. oh no google will stop supporting ie6. the world is ending.
“When IE6 was released, there was no such thing as web standards.”
Huh? CSS1 was a standard in 1996, CSS2 in 1998. Neither of which were well implemented by IE6. IE6 was released in late 2001.
Secondly, it would not have stuck around so long if MS had not stopped browser releases for 5 years. IE came out in 2007.
At last, an intelligent comment. Thanks. I hope someone at techcrunch reads this and realizes how far they have slipped.
…And so it begins.
“To add insult to injury, IE6 continues to lose market share in the browser world.”
If a browser that’s 9 years old, whose company has made two major browser releases after it, were still gaining market share…
think before you write please.
Yeah really, lol.
Whatever it takes to push this God forsaken browser of the end of the Earth.
Before anyone bitch about IE 6, remember 1) its a 10 year old browser, 2) it was called the best browser back then?
Things evolve, so stop bitching!!!
If Google dares MS, then they should stop supporting IE altogether, then I would say Google has some spine
(Gee, and just when some folks were finished migrating from Netscape to IE6…)
But seriously, folks. Yes, I’m a lazy cuss. When I write a website that isn’t IE6-compatible, I’ll feel less culpable.
I am a Microsoft guy by choice, but all I can say is GOOOOOODDDDDDD.
That browser needs to die.
I thinks google is getting ready to release the next version of gdocs, remember this http://goo.gl/8HJ4,
if they’re gonna make it more desktop-like, IE6 won’t support it, just like Wave.
I meant this http://goo.gl/CCVc
Google Docs?
Lol, I am supposed to store all my proprietary documents on a shared service….no thanks.
IE6 is a demon. No simple knife can kill it. Only an instrument of God can vanquish it forever.
Thats a t-shirt.
Newer versions provide websites to be seen as they were designed. Web designers spend a lot of thought, time, creativity and expertise designing for the web. Their work should be displayed in its true form. Updating your browser will provide you with an incredible web experience as the designer has intended.
One of the worst articles I have ever read…really.
I love Google but “murder on the web” lol Google kill ie6 2010 bravo…
Leena,do you use “windows 95″,well I will be as smart as you are said you should stop using it.
I think Win95 continues to lose market share.No,really you should go outside your AppleGoogle box and do some research before you post something.
continues to lose market share..lol..I am not sure I will forget this..ever..
Are you really sure it will lost,maybe 10 years is not enough,maybe technology is in slowmotion,go outside and see the world……
lol lol lol
You think IE6 is bad? Books a Million still runs its sales registers on Win 95 thinking they are secure
How many Win 95 viruses have you heard about lately?
It’s about time.
I feel for anyone who is using IE6. It was just a matter of time for the support dropping wave to start.
Good for Google. Lots of sites have dreamed of phasing out support for this POS browser. A major company like Google phasing out support for it may finally be the knife that kills it.
Great! But why stop at IE6 – Why not just ban IE altogether?
It would make me one happy developer
me too.
Me too… Only 25% of your users could view your site so you’d probably just fade away. I say go for it!
It doesn’t seem like this is such a big blow, people will only install the lastest version of their browser to access the new products… A faster browser will also help with more successful trading in the stock market!
Using a good market timing system can help an investor profit both from the upside and downside of this market.
Consider http://invetrics.com.
Its daily DJIA index trading signal is up more than an amazing 80% for the year and it is free of charge for individual investors
Shame on these so-called “IT Departments” that are proliferating the modern equivalent of the y2k bug in their organizations: doing away with IE6 should be a priority for them. If they were my staff, I’d start firing a few of them for negligence and the see if we could come up with a cost-effective transition away from IE6 in short order.
Safeway (corp HQ) is still using IE6. So are gov’t offices I work in. They have to go thru channels to upgrade and not priority so it gets pushed to the back burner
Agreed. People curse Microsoft and IE when they should be cursing the lethargic nature of organizations and the dummies who run them.
You do realize that the shuttle still uses computers from 1990? Right? Why not get rid of them and update them? Simple. Sometimes, there is no cost effective way to do it.
Businesses who rely on IE6 to run their business today most likely have no reason or incentive to upgrade and go through the cost associated with upgrading. Considering that Microsoft will continue supporting IE6 until 2014, they have about 4 years to do so.
Many IT departments are closed off departments in the sense that they do not allow new software to be installed without testing and a business case and usually it is the business that drives and owns the budgets and not IT.
What a ridiculous analogy. You think you are making some grand point but you are not.
The only people that can kill IE6 for good are Microsoft, by no longer releasing security updates for it.
Only when it becomes for IT depts an un-patchable security issue, so that costs associated with the risk of leaving it installed greatly outweigh the cost of upgrading IE6-dependent software, will we finally see IE6 die.
At the end of the day its how IE6 hits the pocketbooks of big corps and govn’t that is keeping it alive
About time too. MS Hates IE6 and wants people to stop using it. I highly doubt they’ll be even remotely bothered by this news. If anything they’ll probably be cheering them on hoping that more and more sites will do the same so that people are slowly but surely forced to upgrade from IE6.
“Simple. Sometimes, there is no cost effective way to do it.”
True, but that is a fall back argument everyone uses because its simple to understand and hard to prove wrong. The people at these larger orgs often (not always) have no real data to back up that statement.
I disagree that they have no incentive or reason to upgrade. There are plenty of reasons including performance, security, wasted dev time (to make things IE6 compatible), employee productivity/happiness, and now inability to run online apps which are dropping IE6 support.
I am sure there are exceptions out there where it really does not make sense but, I am willing to bet more often then not there are some serious tangible gains which could be made which are being overlooked.
As someone who works for a software as a service app, I can tell you that our end users HATE the fact that they are forced to use IE6 in the workplace.
Why would you want to use a browser that takes 20x longer to load a rich online application?
IE6 is a great example of what the web would be if Microsoft controlled it. I continue to use it just to remind those who design web sites how inferior MS designed products are. IE6, a badge of shame, let MS wear it forever.
For one of my non-tech sites (numbers rounded off):
Sample size: 6,500 unique visitors through search engines. Does not include referrals, repeats, direct.
Google: 5,000
Yahoo: 700
Bing: 250
Rest: All below 100
Browser breakup for above sample:
IE: 60%
Firefox: 25%
Safari: 10%
Chrome: 2.5%
IE version breakup for above sample:
IE 6: 25%
IE 7: 50%
IE 8: 25%
The overall uniques through search engines for IE6 stands at 15%
Demographics (total 111 countries):
US: 62%
Canada: 10%
UK: 6%
Australia: 4%
India: 4%
Rest all below 1% each
Women: 90%
Men: 10%
Age: The age group 25 yrs – 50 yrs make up 95% of visitors.
Lower middle class: 10%
Middle Class: 50%
Upper Middle Class: 30%