8 years late: Microsoft finally pushes users to upgrade from IE6

"August 27, 2001 - Internet Explorer 6 launches. The entire Internet (minus the three Opera users) adopts the new-and-shiny Microsoft browser."

No, the exact same thing that's happening now between IE6 and IE8 happened on August 27, 2001, except it was IE4 and IE6 (have you forgotten about IE4 so quickly?). IE4 was predominant because it was the default web browser that shipped with Windows 98. IE6 is still significant because it is the default web browser that shipped with Windows XP and Windows XP still has a significant installed base.

This situation will continue to occur as the most recent version of IE is newer than the default web browser of an older Windows operating system that still has a significant installed base.

Microsoft wants everyone to upgrade to the latest version of IE and does not want to continue supporting previous version such as IE6 due to increased support and compatibility overheads, however Microsoft publish a clear and well documented product lifecycle to give businesses certainty regarding the availability and support of products they release. This certainty is important to certain businesses so that if they invest in developing a custom application that relies on a particular technology, the business knows that Microsoft will guarantee that technology will be available and supported for a specified time frame as detailed in its product lifecycle. Imagine investing developing a custom application that relies on a particular technology only to have the vendor simply change its mind and change direction.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselectintmsn

Apple announced at a previous WWDC that it will allow carbon application to go 64-bit, and the following year, Apple changed its mind and said only cocoa applications will have access to 64-bit. This screwed Adobe over who was relying on the 64-bit extensions to carbon to get CS4 64-bit on Mac OS X. After Apple's backflip, Adobe had to release CS4 on the Mac as 32-bit only, otherwise Adobe would have had to delay CS4 to rewrite in cocoa to get 64-bit versions. This put Adobe one year behind in it's 64-bit conversion. That type of uncertainty is pretty unpalatable for businesses.

While I don't personally support the use of IE6 in 2009 where unnecessary, I do support Microsoft publishing and supporting a clearly documented product lifecycle.

I work for a Fortune 500 company. I am still forced to use & develop for IE6. Although luckily I code in Java mainly & dont deal a lot with HTML & front end, I did have to actually make stuff IE6 compatible. Almost all our internal websites look horrible on any other browser. It would cost a lot of money to 'upgrade' to IE8 as most of websites would have to re-tweaked & HTML corrected to fit standards which in my short experience will never happen as people who hand out the money look at it in a very simple way, can I surf the sites I want to with IE6, if the answer is yes then we dont need to upgrade.

You say that MS is to blame for the high percentage of people using IE6 but later in the article, you say that IT environments are to blame since they will never update no matter what MS does. I don't see how you could blame people not updating their software on MS in the first place anyway.

Now... if they can only make Internet Explorer 8 MORE FRIGGIN' COMPATIBLE with web standards.

My Distance Education website for online courses in ITT Technical Institute will not run in IE8 and I have to set it to Compatibilty mode. It runs in Firefox with a few issues, and of course works in Chrome. But, IE8? It hates it, it won't even load after logging in.

Anyway, god, I hated the fact that IE6 had to force web designers to make websites compliant to that dreadful web browser. I remember having to make two sets of web sites-- one for IE6 and another for Netscape, which I used more often. However, because of IE6, majority of the websites at that time (before Firefox came into full force), would only run on IE6 or higher because Microsoft and their greedy ways wanted everyone to follow their own godforsaken Java and HTML implementations.

I get *so* frustrated with the anti-IE6 argument (as presented in the main article)..

If this was any other area of business, I think the ludicrous nature of the criticism would be more obvious. For example..

"Volkwagen launches the 1980 model Golf. For 29 years, people have been having to drive around in these things, without rear parking sensors, airbags, sat nav or power brakes.

And Volkswagen are to blame! All these people for some reason can't spare the money to invest in newer models....."

Nothing is cutting edge for ever, and IE6 isn't today. But at the time it was a different matter. And sometimes businesses can't afford to upgrade business workstations.

This is the real world; not one of Microsoft's making.

RE: "It's not like Microsoft can force IE6 to update automatically."

Why can't it do so? Why can't it insert in a Windows update, one that once loaded automatically updates IE6 to IE 8 the next time that IE is accessed?

I have used Firefox since it was called Phoenix. I still have IE6 on my computer because, to the best of my knowledge, it cannot be uninstalled. If Microsoft will supply an IE6 uninstaller I will happily give it the heave-ho.

The pic is missing the daemon tools toolbar. It's so friggin annoying!

Never used IE6, or any other IE, as a primary browser. Stuck with Netscape 4.6/4.7 until the Mozilla suite became usable. And I didn't do this out of hate for Microsoft, just dislike of IE. (I repeatedly complained to friends who work at Microsoft that the company had abandoned IE6, because I wanted it to be a better browser that I would use)

I'm generally seeing about 10%-12.5% of users on IE6. Even this African blogging portal I'm part of the team on and has the majority of its users in Africa on admittedly older machines is at most about 15%. I completely and to no end agree with you that there are far, far too many users on IE6 still and it sucks, but where did you get the 23% figure? I get my stats from these two sources as well as my own logs:
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

-miquel
http://subsaharska.com

Like you said, alot of corporations are the reason for that high percentage. I know my old workplace was. That's why I'd use portable Firefox whenever I had the chance. On the downside, I couldn't access my HR portal from home unless it was from an Internet Explorer browser, which I don't like to use. Firefox and Google Chrome all the way :)

IE 6 was a decent browser back in the day. It's not that great now do to the changes in the internet..i.e. all them stupid hacker people!!! malware, adware, etc. The reason the number of current IE 6 users is a number at all, is probably also due to the fact that most companies are still using XP. Because honestly, VISTA SIMPLY SUX!!! So you install a new users pc with XP that is packed with IE 6. Lazy IT people do not upgrade the browser. And honestly IE 8 SUX!!! Half of the websites I use will not work with IE 8. I remove it off of any pc I come into contact with that has it. And it gets it AUTOMATICALLY through WINDOWS UPDATES. So you have a few choices, leave the pc on IE 6, upgrade to IE7 (hello, IE 7 is great. works with every single website that I have ever come across, looks better, better security, etc etc) or use something like Firefox, chrome, blah blah. But that takes effort on the Tech's part to actually upgrade to a different browser. And on the note of secure browsing, it's a combination of smart browsing, good browser, and most importantly a good firewall, and good AV, Adaware malware removal suite. Even on firefox, chrome IE 8 7 4 whatever, you have to have a good firewall and av removal and spyware removal suite to keep your browser from being jacked.