Google Tells Users To Drop IE6 426
Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."
Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait, There Are People Still Using Firefox? LOL (Score:2, Insightful)
Who are they preaching to? (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyone I know uses Firefox, but me (I use Chrome). IE is used by people who have little other choice, or don't really care to research their software. If you care, you've switched. I'd imagine IE is used mainly on computers where users have no options to install third party software (it's not their decision). Mind you, I'm not anti-Microsoft in the least.
Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody using Firefox or Chrome has Google as their default home. Anybody using IE has MSN as their default home.
This is a war over who gets to propagandize you with their ads and collect your personal information. There is no good/evil dichotomy here if that's what you're looking for.
Further, I'll end with a categorical statement in order to offend people: Anybody with strong feelings about which web browser is the best is probably spending too much time surfing the web, and is in fact suffering from an internet addiction. IE 7, Opera, and Firefox are all pretty similar from a normal end-user perspective.
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Er yes, "internet addiction".
Is it also possible that you are a web designer or at least the guy who got lumbered with getting the company site to "work on most browsers".
Designers worry about browser bugs and quirks, so the end user doesn't have to.
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me. Whenever I have to use IE to browse the web, it's a nightmare. With effective filtering, I've lost my ad-blindness, so now when I go online unprotected I actually see all that crap. Horrible.
dont bullshit please (Score:5, Insightful)
the fact is that, IE6 is WAY outdated now, is not supported anymore, is a gift from heavens for anyone writing exploits, doesnt even support tabs.
excuse me pal, ie6 is early 2000s.
its like the tech world equivalent of saying "dont drop 1930 model cars, even if its 1980s".
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 being a more natural progression for users of IE6 due to familiarity.
Actually all of the users that I've switched from IE6 to IE7 were more confused than the users I switched from any version of IE to Firefox. The interface changed quite a bit in IE7 and Firefox (version 2 anyway) seems to have more of a classical interface.
IE7 also annoys the hell out of me with that stupid "customize your browser" splash screen that refuses to go away on startup until you acknowledge it and save your settings.
Re:FF Codebase Is A Stinking Pile Of Garbage (Score:2, Insightful)
All the funding in the world can't fix the absolute train wreck Internet Explorer codebase.
After using the stinking pile of shit firsthand it became obvious why the Internet Explorer devs in forums like MSDN would flame anyone and everyone who dared complain about the massive security and other problems the basketcase of a browser suffers from. The codebase is such a mess that it will never be fixed without a completely from scratch rewrite. And why it took years to finally get just the major security problems somewhat under control.
When Firefox was a total memory leaker it was a good temporary alternative. Now that Firefox has finally gotten its memory problems up to a reasonable standard and better alternatives like Chrome out now, hopefully Internet Explorer will just go away and die.
Big business is slow to respond (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two very big reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
You also missed in your list a last class: software developers writing reasonably modern code whose applications run like the aforementioned drying paint in IE6 and would like corporates to use FF3 or Chrome because then end users will be pleased by the improvement in the way their pages load and run.
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a few short years ago, Linux users such as myself were becoming decidedly second-class citizens on the web, with many pages not working at all or not working right. Microsoft-specific extensions were polluting the web and making it hard to enjoy without paying Microsoft. I'm not talking about something that could have happened, that did happen. The fact that Firefox came through and won enough market share to make web developers take notice so it doesn't matter so much which browser you use is a HUGE victory. Thanks Firefox!
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Not 'different'. Just safer.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Win2k is a decade old. Stable or not, you can't expect companies to go on supporting it forever. On the Mac side, there's a ton of software that's Leopard-only, dropping support for people who are using any OS more than 15 months old, and there's hardly anything wrong with Tiger. Windows has always had better backwards-compatibility than OS X, of course, but eventually the reason that you'll need to upgrade your OS is because all of your software requires it.
Of course what you want to do on your computer is your business, not mine, but just keep in mind that developers are going to stop supporting you eventually if you don't stay at least reasonably current.
Support YOUR users, not GOOGLE's users (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the web developer pie chart [tinypic.com] will shift.
I'm all for dropping IE6. It is now nothing more than a bane to web developers and the advancement of web pages in general. But to stop accommodating IE6 in your websites simply becomes someone else says to do so is naive. You should support whatever your site's visitors need.
For my wife's site, I can drop support for 800x600 since they comprise of less than 2% of my visitors, and falling (hurray!). Yes, I know fluid design can accommodate all, but sometimes needs necessitate static widths.
However, IE6 still accounts for ~20% of my visitors, so no matter what Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc. says, until that number drops well below 10%, I will still support it.
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Here's why. Two words: adblock, flashblock.
No other single innovation on the web has changed my whole experience of the web. Casual user or not. The web is truly awful without these essential tools.
This isn't about all IE browsers (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, this isn't about IE in general. IE 6 is a large and costly inconvenience for both web application and web site developers. IE 6 doesn't work in exactly the same way as IE7 & IE8. A person doing web development not only has to make sure that an application or site works in the Mozilla based browsers and IE, but that it works in multiple versions of IE. IE 6 is typically the browser that breaks when new code is developed when that code works in all of the other browsers. Even other versions of IE. Organizations and people are hanging onto IE 6. It is past time for those with muscle to begin nudging people away from IE 6
Re:Chrome's OK but can't use it for anything serio (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, market share has nothing to do with it. Any business that is serious is going to just use Linux and develop all its software for Linux, right?
Dream on. Windows has what, 90% market share? Followed by OS X with maybe 7%. Linux is last with perhaps 3%. And if you just count end-user machines and not servers it is probably more like 92%, 7% and 1% for Linux.
Sure, maybe it will change in the future. But for now the reality is that Linux commands such an incredibly small number of end-user machines that it isn't worth paying attention to for packaged software development.
Re:Big business is slow to respond (Score:5, Insightful)
[webapps.... only supports IE6]
I had the same situation in a department at a university... right around the time IE7 was force-deployed by Microsoft. I saw it coming, so I broke Software Update. I made a proposal that was accepted to mothball ALL the Windows XP Pro workstations for OS X iMacs. I purchased a site license for Parallels, and created a custom VM with that "stripped to the bone" edition of XP Pro off TPB (reserialized with our XP site license using keyfinder). Basically the VM was a kiosk... all it would do/could do is run IE6, and the ONLY site it could load were our webapp sites. The VM was never updated, never patched, never installed any anti-spy/anti-malware/anti-virus... so the VM booted in 15 seconds on these Core 2 duo iMacs. Every evening a cron ran to DELETE the VM, and unzip a fresh VM (that brought everything back to my zeroed original custom VM). All the user saw was clicking a dock icon that would launch the VM, which was set to auto launch IE6 in kiosk mode and bring up their webapp. It works like titties, absolutely beautifully for over 2 years now. When Microsoft's grip gets tighter, I don't understand why more IT hasn't just said "fuck you Microsoft! and fuck this!" and sandboxed the precise function they need... the solutions are legion once you realize a VM can do everything real HW can do.
Another step that makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
So far, I think none of Google's actions contradicted my personal opinion on their intentions with Chrome. I still believe their main objective is to force the use of web standards by evenly distributing the browser marketing between Gecko, WebKit and... whatever IE's engine is called. From this point of view, it makes sense that they are still funding Mozilla and chose an engine supported by default on Macs.
And no, they don't want standardization because of some altruistic ideals. It's just easier to develop web applications that way. And getting rid of the anomaly called IE6, which behaves differently from 7 and 8 to the point of being considered a different engine, is a very logical next step.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhmm, the kicker is, I'm *STILL* running Win2k. And not only that, but I've got drivers from within the last year running on it for both my PCIe Radeon HD3650, and my Logitech Driving Force Pro. Nevermind that Realtek supports most of their chipset hardware all the way back to either Win9x or DOS, depending.
And the kicker of all this? Basically any game that doesn't require Windows Live and/or have a hardcoded check for XP will run and play fine on it.
WinXP for all intents and purposes was a rebadge of 2k with some additional eyecandy and a FEW interface changes. But the majority of said interface changes don't affect 90 percent of the applications out there.
Forced obsolescence is fine if there's a reason, but if your 10 year old OS has everything that a modern app needs to support it, there's no reason to upgrade. (Nevermind that 2k is the last windows version without that annoying Windows Activation stuff, and in fact is the reason I spent 300 bucks on it well after WinXP was out.)
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, remember when there were tons of websites that would refuse to display, only giving you the message, "Please upgrade to IE 5.5" (or whatever)? The wouldn't even render improperly, they'd just refuse to display at all.
Can you imagine major sites doing that now?
Re:Dear God Thank You (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FF Codebase Is A Stinking Pile Of Garbage (Score:2, Insightful)
It's your type of thinking that caused Netscape to fail.
True, it had a terrible codebase. This was from trying to add features at a rapid pace in order to compete with IE at the time of the browser wars.
However, at some point a genius like the parent AC came along and decided that the entire codebase had to be rewritten.
This left them in the dust, with IE claiming nearly 100% marketshare.
What they should have done was rewrite code a bit at a time. The code could slowly improve, and they would still remain competitive. This is the course that has been chosen for Firefox.
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Precisely what about IE6 work the way it's supposed to? The plethora of rendering issues aside, it is by far one of the most unstable pieces of software I've ever used. And unless you dig very deep into the Windows processes and force it to run in its own process, it crashes your desktop when it goes down.
That may be true, but I know that most users who are not tech savvy will relaunch a broken app repeatedly and just live with it thinking that is just the way it is.
Yes these are real basic end users - as an IT manager I know of droves of our clients who still have IE6, XP Sp2 or older and ask us if we can still get Office2K3 since they are lost with the new interface.
Familiarity weighs heavily for end-users.
Re:dont bullshit please (Score:3, Insightful)
They should suggest to upgrade their default OS browser (Safari for OS X, IE 7 for Win) and put Safari, Firefox to list of alternatives with Chrome as last option. That is what ethics require.
Also if you keep IE 6 on your machine while IE 7 exists as a free update and use Firefox,Chrome, Safari you are still under big risk. Nobody has option to keep insecure default browser on their system since that is what 3rd party apps and system parts use. It is same deal on OS X. Whether use it or not, keep Safari (so the Webkit) up to date.
Re:Dear God Thank You (Score:3, Insightful)
A positive movement in the force am I feeling... but lurking in the shadows the Sith are... Surprises I sense in IE8... dark times ahead...
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 isn't much better. I had always heard how much extra work was caused by Microsoft's non-compliant browser. The browser alternatives to MSIE are generally known well enough that it was about the right time to start pushing back against the defacto requirement to support the broken browser that has been holding back progress and innovation on the web for years.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Win2k is a decade old. Stable or not, you can't expect companies to go on supporting it forever.
Why not? If there are enough users (especially large businesses) and people paying for support (i.e. licensed or bespoke software) then why cut off customers?
Re:yea it does (Score:4, Insightful)
And you are so eager to 'correct' someone that you didn't think you're comment through at all (or proof-read for grammar). It is IE7 that is not supported on Win2k, IE6 works fine (well, as fine as it does anywhere. ;) ). So you are wrong on your basic point. However, what I think you are trying to say is that IE7 doesn't work on Win2k and that this is somehow in contradiction to what I said. It isn't, though I invite you to explain how. Google is telling people to stop using IE6 and move to either Firefox or Chrome (which also isn't supported on Win2k, as it happens). Notable as a glaring omission is Google's rival's browser IE7. Google are using their influence in one area (ad-supported email accounts) to promote their products in a different market (browsers) at cost to their rival's product. That's anti-trust.
Please don't accuse me of knee-jerk responses. My post is more accurate than yours and reasoned through well-enough, I hope.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Google's main aim is to get people off the IE series, they care less about which browser replaces it for the time being. After all, Google are major funders of the Mozilla project giving them a lot of say so in how it is set up and the direction it goes in (e.g. that Google is the default search option in Firefox is at their request).
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
This is similar in principle - use dominance in one area (ad supported email accounts) to promote business in a different area (browser technology).
You would have a point if Google dominated in that area (ad supported email accounts). But, they don't.
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
On the contrary, Microsoft churns out new libraries at a frightening pace, it's just that nobody uses them.
Almost all of MS's libraries support XP and are distributed independently from the OS. MS generally does not use new programming libraries as an OS feature differentiation, DX10 being one of the obvious exceptions.
Apple actually brags about tying new programming libraries to OS X revisions on their product pages, which is strange. (Ooo, a database API, can't wait to upgrade)
That Bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
"What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."
I realize this was written with the intent of saying, "What a great victory for our hero, Mozilla!"
But let's look at the numbers...
Browser share for November 2008 per w3schools [w3schools.com]:
IE7: 26.6%
IE6: 20%
Chrome: 3.1%
Firefox: 44.2%
Mozilla: 0.4%
Safari: 2.7%
Opera: 2.3%
So, non Microsoft leaves us with 53.4% of the market... Meaning Firefox already commands 80%+ of the non Microsoft share.
Gaining two out of every three - 67% of users quitting Microsoft - when it already has 80%+ of the non Microsoft share - implies its popularity is dropping not gaining amongst non Microsoft users.
Safari's stayed pretty constant for the last few months - as has Firefox, crawling up at a very slow rate. Chrome jumped from 0 to 3% pretty much immediately but has then barely moved in three months. Opera has actually gained proportionally the quickest (2% to 2.3% is a 15% improvement for them in three months).
So, I realize it was intended as a "Yay Firefox" claim - but, if you look deeper at the numbers - less of the new Anti-MS crowd are adopting it than have in the past.
Re:yea it does (Score:3, Insightful)
Google are using their influence in one area (ad-supported email accounts) to promote their products in a different market (browsers) at cost to their rival's product. That's anti-trust.
No, it's not quite anti-trust, because Google doesn't have a monopoly in the "ad-supported email accounts" market, which is the requirement. Using your influence (really, market share) in one market to promote a product in another market is not in itself illegal.
A timely example of this (and a car analogy to boot) would be auto-makers who also have finance divisions that write car loans for their buyers. The particular car company is at an advantage, because they can lower the price of their cars to induce people to take out loans with them (or the other way around -- lower the loan rates to induce consumers to buy more cars). The practice is not illegal, because no one car company has a monopoly in the market, and a consumer can take their dollars (and/or their credit) to another automaker.
Similarly, users of Googlemail who want to continue using IE6 also have choices. They can switch to Hotmail, or Yahoo, or an e-mail service provided by their ISP, or they can roll their own server and use Outlook or Thunderbird or what-have-you.
The leverage google has, to make users switch from IE6 to another browser isn't that gmail is the only choice, but that it is (or is perceived by many to be) the best choice. Google is banking on the fact that loyal users of Gmail will give up their chosen browser, at whatever expense, and switch to Chrome (preferably) or Firefox.
There's nothing illegal about producing a superior product, and using that quality to force other, inferior competitors out of the market. It's the very essence of the free market, and even a lefty like me recognizes that this mechanism works well to increase the quality of the goods in the market (all other factors being equal).
And last of all, people need to remember that Microsoft, not Google is the convicted monopolist. It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion that Google is making a play to break the Microsoft monopoly on browsers, and if Google is doing what the DoJ won't do, then I say, hooray for Google (for now).
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
It works fine and well enough for a large % of ads. Its better than nothing when I have to use something other than firefox. As good as adblock is its still limited to one single browser. Ive been using the hosts file method for ages and I havent noticed an increase of ads lately. I disagree that anything has really been changed in ad delivery since 1996.
The fact is that a large majority of ads really do come from 3rd parties who use their own servers. Thats how syndication works. You dont host the ads, caselmedia does. Block casel and youre done.
I also build hosts files to block server names of malware and other unsavory destinations potential spyware might call.
>so if a site puts ads in a div class="adcolumnwrapper" or so.
Thats presentation/formatting. The image or flash object still needs to be loaded from the ad server.
>(This also works for many text ads, BTW.)
Blocking google text ads takes one line in the hosts file.
>I'm not saying that NOONE does that anymore
Just about everyone who does ad blocking in IE uses this method.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Although it does sound a bit anti-Microsoft on Google's part
So what. You don't think Microsoft wouldn't shiv them in the back every chance they get. They've only been doing it for 30 years and deserve much more than this little taste of their own medicine.
And no, I don't consider this "being evil".
Not only does Microsoft richly deserve this (i.e., real competition), but it's a service to users by helping to improve the Internet ecology as a whole, as the millions of users that are most likely to be pwned over are now being directly told to switch to software that isn't hopelessly insecure. If some people pay the price for allowing themselves to be locked in to the prison that is Microsoft software, well, hopefully they'll learn their lesson.
"Works with IE" is perfectly OK, "Requires IE" is stupid and evil.
Re:Makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
but it's a service to users by helping to improve the Internet ecology as a whole, as the millions of users that are most likely to be pwned over are now being directly told to switch to software that isn't hopelessly insecure.
A bold improvement, and not just that, but the ecosystem grows more diverse. Having a monoculture of a single browser for an overwhelming bulk of the userbase is blight-prone. Conversely, diversity is resilience. O, happy progress!
And more than that, a browser-fragmented userbase forces development towards interoperability (which can realistically be achieved these days with the level of standards compliance in modern browsers), which denies any one company the ability to lock everyone into their platform.
Where they then sit on their laurels.
For fucking years.
As IE6 rots and rots.
And developers pull their hair out trying to cope with IE's quirks while supporting other browsers (via standards as possible).
And IE6 rots some more.
And systems get pwned and zombified into spam spewers.
And technical friends grudgingly have to clean up their friends' borked systems.
God damn it, I just have to scream about how angry I am at Microsoft for what they did to us with The Great Languish! They sewed up the market and proved their lack of care for us users and developers by not keeping IE6 current. Oh, but a little fox started nibbling on their lunch and they think they can roll out some shiny new browsers and get us back to the same old lock in? Won't work this time. Piss off!
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
This is similar in principle - use dominance in one area (ad supported email accounts) to promote business in a different area (browser technology).
You would have a point if Google dominated in that area (ad supported email accounts). But, they don't.
He would have a point if Google dominated that area, AND if Gmail gave trouble exchanging email with other email providers using SMTP. But they don't, you can still send and receive email to any other provider.