Microsoft Celebrates The Demise Of IE6 In The US

[webfact]

Microsoft Celebrates The Demise Of IE6 In The US

Internet Explorer 6 — long a thorn in the side of many web developers because of its quirks, limited feature support, and cockroach-like resistance to extinction —is finally on its last legs in the United States. And Microsoft is celebrating.

In a post on the Windows Team blog, Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Marketing, writes that Internet Explorer 6 is now down to less than 1% market share in the United States according to the most recent data from Net Applications. It’s far from the first country to reach that milestone — Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway have done it already — but it also had far more Internet users to convert. Alongside the US, Microsoft also notes that the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, Portugal and the Philippines have all dipped below the 1% mark as well.

And while it might sound a bit odd to hear about Microsoft celebrating the demise of software it built long ago, this isn’t a change of heart for the tech giant — the company has been doing its part to help IE6 die for quite a while. It created the IE6 Countdown, which tracks the progress of countries worldwide as they work to move people to more modern browsers (Capriotti writes that the site has been visited by 2.75 million people and has drawn 5.6 million views). And when Denver-based design firm Aten Design Group held a funeral for the woefully out-dated browser back in 2010, Microsoft sent along some flowers.

Of course, while Microsoft would love for all of these former IE6 users to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, that doesn’t seem to be happening. Recent reports from StatCounter and NetMarketshare show IE trending downward — from 59.22% to 51.87% between February and December 2011, according to NetMarketshare — while Google’s Chrome is making steady gains (11.41% to 19.11%, in the same report).

Update: Note that it’s only IE 6 that’s down to below 1% marketshare, not IE on the whole.

Source: http://techcrunch.co...-ie6-in-the-us/

-- techcrunch.com 2012-01-04

[Lannig]

It might be less than 1% on computers browsing the Internet, because I suspect this is where these figures are coming from, but in corporate/government environments it's still the only officially supported browser in many, many places. Reason for this: a zillion legacy web-based apps that only work properly with I6 and that no one can fix anymore (or at least it's not economically doable). Of course web developers aren't too concerned about this, except the ones who have to support corporate intranets too.

[rotary]

Go Google Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft software stinks anyway and is not that user friendly

[whybother]

Imagine how quickly the IE share would dive if it wasn't pre-installed on Windows.

[astral]

It might be less than 1% on computers browsing the Internet, because I suspect this is where these figures are coming from, but in corporate/government environments it's still the only officially supported browser in many, many places. Reason for this: a zillion legacy web-based apps that only work properly with I6 and that no one can fix anymore (or at least it's not economically doable). Of course web developers aren't too concerned about this, except the ones who have to support corporate intranets too.

The very reason that XP has lasted so long...............

[nikster]

Imagine how quickly the IE share would dive if it wasn't pre-installed on Windows.

It would be close to zero.

On the other hand, not sure how much market share Chrome would gather if it wasn't advertised all over Google properties...

Forgot to say: Halleluja on the death of IE6.

While it's true that corporate crapware can't be replaced cost-efficiently, I am sure solutions for that could be found. It would be easy for Microsoft to allow a special IE6 mode in IE9 for this purpose wouldn't it? If it doesn't already have it that is.

Edited January 4, 2012 by nikster

[Lannig]

Just as I wrote earlier in this thread ...

Death of IE6 still greatly exaggerated, says browser hit squad

http://www.theregist...2/ie6_browsium/

Edited February 3, 2012 by Lannig