
Google Twists Knife In IE6, Pulls Support From Docs And Sites - peter123
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/29/google-twists-knife-in-ie6-pulls-support-from-docs-and-sites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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danskil
Dear Google,

I love you.

Signed, Web Developers Everywhere

~~~
amalcon
I hate to be the detractor here, because getting rid of IE6 would be great for
everyone, but do we really expect discontinuing Google Docs and Google Sites
to have any effect on IE6 market share? They're mostly corporate users, which
means they're probably using MS Office (and have a web team or contractor)
anyway.

~~~
openid_broke
No, but this makes it just a little bit easier for web developers to convince
their boss or client that IE6 isn't worth supporting.

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og1
I think phasing out IE6 is actually good for MS as well.

~~~
nathanwdavis
I recall reading an article a few months back that MS has begun their own
campaign to get IE6 users upgraded (to IE8 of course). This is really not a
big blow to Microsoft.

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samuel
If they would be serious about that, they would distribute IE8 for Win2k.

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middus
For a ten year old operating system? Yeah, right....

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dangoldin
The official link is here:
[http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-
browsers...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-browsers-for-
modern-applications.html)

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jsm386
'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.'

 _That_ be would twisting a knife - and I would love to see it happen. Pulling
support for _some_ new features in Docs/Sites isn't that significant.

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FluidDjango
Well, who is going to feel the knife is the IT departments that keep
prohibiting FF, etc. on their employees' systems.

...and the poor slobs who got sold software that would only work via IE6.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's not really about all those enterprise-y intranet sites that "only" work
on IE6. It's likely that the amount of effort necessary to make those sites
work on IE8 is, on average, not that great. The problem is more the
environment those sites were created in. Hidebound, fear-based bureaucracy
combined with very little development talent.

Most such sites are burdened by crushing change-control processes. Those
change-control processes exist as a somewhat reasonable bulwark against the
very real harm that an unskilled, talentless development team (which, sorry to
say, is the norm in the enterprise) lead by unsophisticated, incompetent
management can do. This creates a double-whammy for corporations who want to
move away from IE6. In principle the work may not be that difficult or
extensive, but the dev. team may be too incompetent to even be aware of what
the right work is or what the risks are, and the testing process alone would
be extremely costly and time consuming. Not to mention the tricky cross-
coordination between multiple teams that may be required. It's a perfect storm
of just the sorts of things that can halt enterprise-y organizations in their
tracks.

Note that the even bigger problem of updating all of the sites on the web so
they worked in more modern browsers (even back in the day a multi-billion
dollar problem) has already largely been solved. Because site owners knew they
had no choice so they rationally invested enough effort into keeping up with
the times as was necessary. It's not the size of the problem, it's the
capability of the people and organizations tasked with solving it that's the
problem.

~~~
zyb09
I've seen lot of things, but still never encountered one of these rumored
'enterprise IE6 only intranet'-apps. Do these things really exists? And why
have they not been rewritten yet? These things must be 10+ years old. I
rewrote couple internal apps that were a mess of php tucked together with
mysql.. they worked.. but hell.

If I'll come across one of these IE6 apps, I'll be the first one to lobby for
a rewrite.

~~~
hy3lxs
Go to any Wells Fargo branch. Ask a banker to pull up your account. Notice the
little blue 'e' in the upper-right corner.

That's over 6000 retail locations using ie6. To handle your money.

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grandalf
It's about time. If Google is willing to take a stand against China this is
the least it can do back home.

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peter123
if they discontinue support for IE6 on Google.com home page, that would really
kill off IE6.

~~~
barredo
That would hurt Google earnings a lot since IE6 is ~20% of global browser
market share (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Msieshare1>)

~~~
icey
Who knows how much it would hurt Google's earnings. These aren't people who
are out buying new computers, who says they're clicking on ads?

I'm sure that some are clicking, but I don't know that IE6 users are
necessarily as lucrative to Google as users of other browsers.

~~~
sachinag
I would bet you every last dollar I own that IE 6 users are, on average, the
most lucrative users out there. You know how people here say "who looks at
ads?" You can't click ads you don't see. And remember, standard user studies
say that a large segment of Google users think the ads on SERPs are actually
search results.

In short, IE 6 users are dumber than users of other browsers and Google's
revenue is juiced by dumb users who click their ads.

~~~
icey
I know that IE users are more likely to click on ads, but I haven't heard much
about which versions are more likely to click through. Most of the visitors I
get to my sites via adwords are on IE 7 and 8; but that's just anecdotal
evidence.

So, if you've got something that says IE 6 users are more likely to click on
advertisements than any other version of IE, I'd love to see it - maybe we
should still be paying attention to them.

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pxlpshr
i wish Facebook would follow suit and toss all IE6 users into their lite
version.

~~~
Groxx
I actually like the lite version more than the regular one. Apps bug the hell
out of me. They're all noise in my signal-to-noise ratio, and I try to keep
that as high as possible. Facebook tends to hit the extreme-low side.

Heck, one of the first things I did when the news feed appeared on my home
page was to hide it with CSS. I've been updating it every time I need to, and
I'm ridiculously happy not seeing all that crap every time I need to check FB
for messages (some people just don't comprehend email). Several of my friends
use it too, and all have remarked how much nicer FB is without the feed.

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olalonde
Google, I owe you one.

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jackfoxy
As usual the source document
[http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-
browsers...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-browsers-for-
modern-applications.html) is more concise and wastes less of my time. Starting
March 1 key functions may no longer work on IE 6 and other older browsers.

This is good news for my company. It hastens the day when we can drop support
for IE6.

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chrischen
This for me officially means I no longer have to support IE 6 for my app.
Whew, bullet dodged. Sure wasn't looking forward to fixing those bugs.

~~~
coderdude
Just because Google did it on a couple of their minor properties doesn't mean
doing the same won't bight you in the butt. Don't be foolish, they haven't
discontinued IE6 support on their search service so obviously they still like
having those customers.

Edit: spelling

~~~
chrischen
No I'm not foolish! I want to help Google kill IE 6. Perhaps it'll bite me in
my butt, perhaps it won't, but I think the last person to know that would be
you.

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yason
I'm kind of surprised that IE6 has actually been actively, not just
accidentally, supported somewhere in the recent years. Microsoft has released
two new versions after 6 so MS can't be blamed either.

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endtime
How many of the people still using IE6 also use Google Docs? Aren't all IE6
users either in a corporate environment (where, surely, they have a copy of
Office) or, uh, not savvy?

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city41
Apparently enough for Google to take a stand here.

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endtime
Isn't the opposite (few enough that Google can make this change) just as
plausible, if not more so?

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richardburton
I wish Google could spend some of its ad budget on educating the general
public on what a browser actually is. Their current Chrome adverts confuse
people like my Dad.

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sorbus
So, does this mean that Google will no longer be testing on IE6, or that they
will actively block/disable their products on it?

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motters
Google doesn't need a knife, it needs a stake. IE6 is like the vampire of web
browsers.

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zebra
IE6 is slowly heading to hell. This is my personal wish.

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barnaby
ABOUT TIME!!!!

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rortian
The other day I found out that MSN games don't support IE6. Google and
Microsoft are allies on this one.

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access_denied
The irony is: nothing will put more cash in MS pockest than forcing those
corporate lame-ducks to finally upgrade.

~~~
Tichy
Isn't upgrading IE free? Or is it really old versions of Windows they run,
that can't be upgraded? Which ones would that be?

