Microsoft said this week that it is the time to give up at Internet Explorer 6, which was launched 10 years ago. We are in a new era and only the modern browsers should exist. Microsoft launched a deathwatch for this browser, by saying that this browser is “gone for good”, reports PCWorld.
The Web analytics company Net Applications expressed that this browser has still a certain usage of all the Internet users, which is about 12%. Almost half of this percent comes from China. Microsoft wants to push the market share of IE6 to go below 1%. The manager of IE’s marketing campaign, Roger Capriotti, said that to show their interest in tearing down this browser, Microsoft even started a new site. The name of the site is very suggestive and you can access it by clicking here: ie6countdown.com.
IE6 is used in 43 countries, including the United States. Of course, China is at number one, followed by Japan, Germany, Russia and others. On this site, you will see the progress made by the engineers to migrate the features and the utilities of this browser to the newer versions, which definitely have to be improved, to be able to compete with the most powerful browsers there are today.
In August 2009, there was started a campaign against the Microsoft’s IE6, which it seems that has not yet stopped. Microsoft asked its users, which are named “friends” to not their own friends to use IE6 and to direct them towards the newer versions of this browser. http://www.pcworld.com/article/221448/microsoft_counts_down_to_ie6s_death.html, this is the article where you can find more information related to this subject.
The Windows XP users who have not changed to IE7 and IE8 are expected to make this move and the Windows 7 users can try the beta version of IE9. Even though they are not designed by Microsoft, Chrome and Firefox are very much spread among the users who used to have Internet Explorer running on their computers.
The aim that Microsoft has of reducing the market share of IE6 below 1% is found in the fact that the developers and the engineers who support this browser, will not have to support a browser which is outdated. They will be able to focus more on supporting the newer versions, instead of giving explanations about how to solve an issue, which is clearly that it can be solved in one single way: upgrade the Web browser.11
