Google Ends Internet Explorer 9 Support In Google Apps

An anonymous reader writes "Google has announced it is discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 9 in Google Apps, including its Business, Education, and Government editions. Google says it has stopped all testing and engineering work related to IE9, given that IE11 was released on October 17 along with Windows 8.1. This means that IE9 users who access Gmail and other Google Apps services will be notified 'within the next few weeks' that they need to upgrade to a more modern browser. Google says this will either happen through an in-product notification message or an interstitial page."

Comments

Walled Garden

[0xG]

Although IE* is crap, I can see that Google is heading for the walled garden approach, like Apple.
Use our apps. Best with Chrome...

Re:Walled Garden

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah, I started using Apps for nonprofits for a local group, and sometime in the early summer, the spreadsheets stopped working for anything but Chrom[e,ium], as far as columns lining up with the row markers. There's an open issue on it, lots of people bitching about current Firefox being broken, but no fixes or response from Google.

Obviously, I need to switch to a different solution, since I can't force all my volunteers to use a particular browser.

We're stuck on 9

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Hell, we moved off of 6 sometime this year. We don't personally run Google Apps, but we can't be unique in having IE restrictions such as that.

We're also a Linux firm, and the latest Firefox you can run on our Linux (RedHat AS 5, moving to 6) is Firefox 17. Chrome/Chromium won't even run at all.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[smash]

Not quite that bad here, i've gotten rid of almost all of our XP, but we have apps that work in IE9, but not IE10. One app won't work in IE9 yet, and unfortunately it's not our app - we're a contractor and the customer's flight booking app is IE8 or previous only.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[smash]

Sometimes it isn't YOUR company's app you need to use. In the real world, businesses deal with OTHER BUSINESSES.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[smash]

Chrome less so, at least they provide ADM templates. But you still need to deal with automatic updates breaking your certification process (again, IE = easy via WSUS) and the fact that IE is already there. If there is a BUSINESS NEED for Google apps, then maybe the sensible thing to do is to run IE 10 for those users who need it. If there is no business need for an app that WILL NOT RUN in IEx then there's very little sense in deploying an additional browser.

And no, you can't just secure IE by pointing it at a dummy proxy - because the components in it are used throughout Windows and Office for rendering HTML and other stuff. So you need to secure it properly. Adding another browser on top is just adding complexity and additional workload. Unless there is a valid business case for it (I'm yet to see one in the real world) then it is a waste of time (and thus, the company's money) going there.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[Anonymous Coward]

If your company needs gmail to get it's work done, I hope you've informed your customers that their communications & business interests with you are subject to third-party security risks, and you have an appropriate legal response strategy in place.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[smash]

Haha i forgot about that. Yes, Firefox has a number of areas where they have decided against using the OS-provided method of doing things, and invented their own way of doing it. From network proxy settings, to certificate store, etc. At least both Safari and Chrome appear to try and make use of the existing configuration within the host OS.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[smash]

I'm not just talking about apps within my walls. Exhibit a: we are a mining contractor, and we need to fly staff to and from remote sites. A number of our clients use a min-site management system that does accomation bookings, flight bookings, etc. To get on/off site we need to use it. It runs in IE only.

We don't use it, we don't get on site. We don't get on site, we don't earn any money.

It's not our app. We have no control over it and no ability to make decisions regarding it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for web standards and ripping out broken crap, but you don't always have a choice, and you play the hand you're dealt.

Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land

[MobyDisk]

You listed IE-specific solutions, then complain that only IE supports them.

Want reliable proxy autodetect? Most other browsers break on DHCP based WPAD.

Use a transparent proxy. Those stupid proxy servers that you have to configure in each application suck. Most applications don't support it. Secure download sites don't work, secure FTP is unreliable. Even Microsoft's own MSDN download manager doesn't support a proxy server.

Want to deploy links, manage security zones, etc via group policy?

By "deploy links" I take that to mean "shove bookmarks into people's browsers" which is better handled by putting those links on the intranet site. That works with any browser, any OS, with less work. No special corporate policy required.

The primary purpose of security zones is so you can run ActiveX controls. No other browser needs special security settings for ActiveX.