Google ditches IE 6

Jake Widman
Saturday, 30 January 2010 12:21

Your IT - Home IT

Declaring "modern browsers for modern applications," Google has announced that it is phasing out support for older browsers, specifically Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.

In a post on the Google Enterprise Blog, Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth writes that "The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice.

"Unfortunately," Sheth continues, "very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively."

As of March 1, Sheth says, Google is going to drop support for "older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0," starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. That means that many functions in those products might not work properly any more.

This is not the first time Google has dissed IE 6: in September, the Google Wave development team announced Google Chrome Frame, an IE plugin that got around the poor performance caused by IE"s failure to "keep up."

IE 6 was also implicated in the recent cyberattack on Google, leading some European governments to suggest people not use it.

To continue getting the full benefit from Google Apps, Sheth recommends IE 7.0 or above, Firefox 3.0 or better, Google Chrome 4.0 and up, or Safari 3.0 or later.