Internet Users Not Updating Browser

Jackson writes "Security researchers from ETH Zurich, Google, and IBM Internet Security Systems have shown that more than 600 million Internet users don't use the latest version of their browser. The researchers' paper, shows that as of June 2008, only 59.1 percent of Internet users worldwide use the latest major version of their preferred web browser. Suggestions have also been made to inform users that their browser is out of date."

Comments

Why *should* people update?

[pla]

Suggestions have also been made to inform users that their browser is out of date.

Why? I know I run an out-of-date browser (FF1.5), and just don't care. For that matter, it annoyed me when FF tried to update itself (and refused to take "no" for an answer), to the point that I blocked its update site in my hosts file.

The computer industry (and I say this as part of it) has a disease - We insist on always having the latest-and-greatest version of everything, despite already having something "good enough". Now, I'll lead the pack in bitching about stupid or stubborn users, but in this case, I can certainly sympathize with them... Stop forcing updates on us that have no (apparent) use except making a higher number appear in the "about" dialog.

Of course, if a really impressive new feature appears, I'll gladly upgrade to get it; But in the browser world, we haven't seen any really useful new features in a looooooong time.