Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6.0. The Microsoft browser that is still widely (read: wrongly) used in a lot of big businesses today has been identified as the biggest risk in cyber attacks on the search engine. Google announced that certain services, like Google Docs, would not “work properly” within the browser.
Following Google’s revelations, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed. Around 20% of web users still use the nine-year old browser, including many UK government departments. The online campaign ie6nomore, supported by more than 70 web firms, says that because the browser does not support modern web standards it restricts what developers can do and is “holding the web back”. Microsoft has said
that it will support the browser until 2014.
Google is not alone is trying to get people to stop using IE 6, and upgrade to a newer browser. Even Microsoft itself has been trying to push people to upgrade the browser. 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 in order to get full Gmail-based features while accessing business email accounts via a web browser.
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