Slashdot Mirror
Google Tells Users To Drop IE6
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."
There is one very big reason for Google to do this, and it's not what many Slashdotters think.
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.
if it was, google would drop 7 support and tell them to switch too.
the fact is that, IE6 is WAY outdated now, is not supported anymore, is a gift from heavens for anyone writing exploits, doesnt even support tabs.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".
Read radical news here
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
[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.
The Admin and the Engineer
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.)
I will never understand why companies will spend so much time, money, rewriting code, testing, and training to migrate from one version of MS software to another and then use the excuse that they can't switch to Open Source because of the cost of migrating.