Google has announced that they are discontinuing support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) effective next month. Support will be slowly phased out starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. In lieu of IE6, Google is recommending that users download and upgrade to a more modern and popular browser. At a minimum, Google’s suggested browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, Google Chrome 4.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, Apple Safari 3.0 or any version number greater then the listed minimums.
The official rationale for this recommendation is that older browsers are incapable of adequately handling the richness of today’s 2.0 internet be it the streaming video content or chat applications. With new features being introduced to the Google suite of products regularly, the search engine giant wants to ensure that as many users as possible can access the features without incident. Unofficially though, many industry insiders are speculating that the recent attacks against Google may have expedited their decision to retire support for IE6.
In either case though, this is a good move but it will take some education as recent estimates suggest that some 13.5% of web users still rely on IE6 as their browser of choice.
Google are just indulging their dislike of Microsoft, by going in for the good old sport of Microsoft-bashing, in the hope of gaining a commercial advantage: i.e. enhancing the user-base for their own web browser, Chrome, at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Google has a financial interest in rubbishing IE6. So this is not an unbiased assessment of that browser by Google, but a blatent piece of opportunism, following Google’s well-publicised alleged problems with IE6 over the last few days.
Moreover, the reality is that Google are only planning to upgrade some unimportant aspects of their website. The search engine, the important bit, will continue to function normally in IE 5 and IE 6.
Many IE6 users are running some version of Windows 9x, on an older computer, one that isn’t capable of running IE7. So what Google is really saying is: we demand that you buy a new computer, and a new Operating System, and all-new Windows NT software.
Well, no one is going to do that! Not because one search engine makes a trivial change to its website. Even if Google disappears tomorrow, there are plenty of other search engines.