I just received an email from Google Apps and am grinning from ear to ear. Google announced, “…we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.”

Amen!

IE6 was released in August of 2001! Yet people still use it today, not taking advantage of the latest technology. Could you imagine in 2001 using a browser from 1992. No, you wouldn’t because the experience would be so much different (Mosaic was starting development in December of 1992!)

Ok, why do I care about this? Because I think this is an important step to killing off IE6. We now have a bigger reference to support our case for clients to upgrade. Before this, honestly, the fact the manufacturer themselves were no longer supporting the application was not a good enough reason to upgrade. But as popular and important tools become unavailable to IE6 users, it will force them to get current.

I love it.

Thank you Google,
Paul

Here’s the message:

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Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

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