Google Diminishing Support For IE6
Search giant Google has announced that as of March 1, two of its web services (Google Docs and Google Sites) will stop supporting IE6. The company is urging users to switch to IE 7.0+, Firefox 3.0+, Chrome 4.0+ or Safari 3.0+ so as to ensure that they are able to use the latest web applications without any glitches.
This move may come as a reaction to the browser being identified as the tender spot in the recent cyber attacks on the search engine and other companies. However, it could also be a follow up to Orkut and YouTube’s phasing out of IE6 support which occurred almost 6 months ago considering that Microsoft has since patched the vulnerabilities that were exploited in the browser. According to TGDaily, Google is also urging Gmail users to switch to Chrome of Firefox as they are ‘twice as fast’ and has labeled IE6 as an unsupported browser for the email service.
Quoting from the Official Google Enterprise Blog, the company explains that “Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers”. Unlike Microsoft, Google is able to take such a stand on IE6 as the former has to support XP and the browser until 2014, and therefore is urging users to make an upgrade.
It is quite clear that Google has had enough with Internet Explorer 6.
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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.
Most 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.