Google Apps drop support for IE9

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/11/google-drops-support-for-ie9.html

by ritchiea • 13 years ago

251 179 13 years ago

googlesystem.blogspot.com

davidjgraph2• 13 years ago

"The policy is not useful for Internet Explorer, which doesn't update automatically and has limited OS support."

First point is wrong, from IE 11 the default is automatic updates.

The second point is an unusual way to phrase it...

On the overall topic, I find this strange. Google Docs seems to make efforts to target Microsoft Office users by writing importers for what are very complex formats. It then pretty much cuts itself off from most medium and larger Microsoft based companies, very few of which, in my experience, are up to IE 10.

I wonder if this says something about them really targeting the small, but fastest growing companies and anything really big is nice, but not the priority.

emn133• 13 years ago

Alternatively, they may just not have thought about it in that much detail.

Yep, I'm betting on unintended consequence rather than deep plan here.

It would certainly be pretty unwise to exclude the best-paying customers intentionally.

Touche2• 13 years ago

I bet they've more than thought about it. I bet they have data that shows them their customers care more about using Google Docs than they care about using IE9, and will switch browsers.

RussianCow• 13 years ago

I also don't think a company as big as Google would make such an important decision without considering the consequences. This decision wasn't made on a whim, they've clearly given it some thought.

ajross• 13 years ago

I think that's missing the point. If a "Microsoft-based company" is mandating IE9 and disallowing browser installs, they're not the sort of shop likely to be trying new office suite software (!) any time soon. Conservative markets are conservative, in general you simply can't market replacement products to them directly.

The only people switching older systems to Docs are the people willing to try new stuff, more or less by definition. A Chrome or Firefox install for these folks isn't nearly as invasive as junking Word and Excel is.

zarify2• 13 years ago

This isn't strictly true. I work in education and for a large part of our state the network and operating environment is managed by the education department, but services are largely left up to schools. This means we're left with IE9 as the default web browser but lots of students use Google Docs for their work (not to mention staff). I know other states look at or are using Docs across the board.

dougmccune• 13 years ago

but this misses the point that often in these companies what you can install on your machine is incredibly locked down, which makes SaaS the only way to easily get new apps you can actually use. You may very well have users who want new software, but the only way they can do so is through the web, since installing new desktop software requires rolling a boulder up a hill.

michaelmior• 13 years ago

Even if the default is to automatically update starting at IE 11 it's irrelevant given that IE 11 is the newest version. Although it is a welcome change going forward.

JohnTHaller6• 13 years ago

That description is pretty accurate. 58% of the market is using Internet Explorer currently. Of Internet Explorer users, the breakdown by version is:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.0: 2.57%

Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0: 32.63%

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0 : 16.34%

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 : 37.48%

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 : 2.26%

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 : 8.49%

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 : 0.23%

(Source: NetMarketShare. Note that this is global so skewed a bit by all the pirated copies of Windows XP in China, etc)

IE is a bit of a mess browser-wise because we've nearly always had a ton of users not on the latest version. The reason? IE doesn't automatically update to a later version. Every other browser on Windows and Linux does. The only other exception is Safari on Mac OS X, which has specific versions artificially pegged to the OS like IE is with Windows. That's why we have 38% of IE users on an outdated browser like IE8 and 8.5% on IE6. Like IE8, IE9 is lacking in many important areas that users of Firefox, Google Chrome, etc don't need to worry about. IE9 lacks several CSS3 tags that have been supported for a while by Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. IE9 lacks columns support, animation support, transform, and transition support. IE10 and IE11 properly support it.

In short, Google can keep making Google Apps better by dropping support for dead browsers like IE9. I mean dead as in they're not being developed further. They're stuck with broken or non-existent CSS3 support. And, as pointed out by others, the type of organization that's going to try out Google Apps as a MS Office replacement, isn't the type of organization that's going to be stuck on IE8/9.

oneeyedpigeon6• 13 years ago

NetMarketShare's stats wildly contradict everyone else's [1]. If you believe them, IE is used almost 3 times as much as Chrome/Firefox. If you believe anyone else, Chrome is ahead of IE.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

Those statistics are for the general population. The argument the parent comment was making that a lot of medium to larger sized corporations are still using IE <10.0 so Google is losing that market by not supporting those browsers.

spankalee• 13 years ago

Remember, Google has access to their own numbers from actual users of Google Apps. I wouldn't be surprised if IE9 usage looks much different for them.

They also have a sales force that talks to large potential and current customers, and I'm sure their feedback is taken into account.

Yaggo• 13 years ago

Industry-leading professionals don't make technology decisions based on uneducated choices of big masses.

oblio• 13 years ago

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy

Slightly taken out of context, but still relevant: "The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife."

jotm3• 13 years ago

I thought IE updates through Windows Update?

Regardless, what a piece if shit! Just fired it up to check the version (it's version 9, apparently no Windows Update update) and it's so goddamn slow!

I'm now on 100mbps fiber, Firefox and Chrome are pretty much instant, IE takes 10 seconds to open the MSN page, and another 20 to perform a search from the address bar in Bing and open the first result (a Microsoft.com page!). Unbelievable.

csmuk9• 13 years ago

I think you're doing something wrong. Even my low memory ceiling IE9 test VM doesn't behave like that and I'm on 12mbit ADSL.

newsreader• 13 years ago

I have to agree with csmuk. I have four browsers installed on my laptop (Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and IE) and IE does not take 10 seconds to open the MSN page and Bing searches return results instantly. Something is wrong with your system.

josteink4• 13 years ago

First point is wrong, from IE 11 the default is automatic updates.

Actually, I think that is from IE 10, or at least so it is on my machine.

code_duck5• 13 years ago

Are those updates frequent and steady feature updates, a la Chrome, or merely security and bug fix updates? The former would be a big change from previous IE. The latter would mean Google's statement is still basically accurate, and is what most Windows systems have been doing for years with Windows update.

eitally• 13 years ago

I don't think you're actually correct anymore. There's a huge push going on in enterprise right now to get everyone upgraded from WinXP to at least (and typically) Win7, and many companies are including an upgrade to IE10 or IE11 in part of the desktop image. Generally speaking, unless there are specific reasons for requiring an older version of the browser, they're going with the newest available and allowing it to auto-update.

You should feel good knowing that the predominant reason why this sea change has occurred is because of developers and the pace of the modern web: devs are refusing to target old versions of browsers, especially IE, anymore. In edge cases where a specific browser+version is required, that's pushed to the affected user(s) as a one-off.

My team, anecdotally, don't even test against IE for internal-only apps anymore. We make sure things work with FF & Chrome current and current-1 and that's it. For external facing apps we cross-test against IE current and current-1, too, but that's the minority of our work.

filipedeschamps• 13 years ago

God bless Google for pushing the internet forward.

freehunter• 13 years ago

I wonder if Google will ever end up in legal trouble for such a policy. While I don't support the notion that any company or person should have to support any version of OS or browser, knowing the massive effect that Google has on the web market and the fact that they have their own browser, if there is any attempt to specifically lock out older competing browsers, the FTC or EU might have questions about that. If you're pushing to be number one in a massive market, you have to play by different rules (as Microsoft found out in the 90's).

Google hasn't been playing nice with Microsoft for a while (see how many Google apps are in the Windows Phone store, the issue where they locked out IE Mobile from viewing Google Maps, or how they treat Windows Phone trying to interface with YouTube). In a way it's nice to see Microsoft reaping what they've sown so long ago, but in another way it's incredibly frustrating from an end user perspective to be someone who likes Microsoft software (such as Windows Phone) and also enjoy using Google services like Maps and Youtube.

Google should be careful with how much they're pushing against Microsoft, especially with Microsoft's new market position versus Google. Microsoft is hardly the monopoly anymore.

davidjgraph2• 13 years ago

This market if office software, and web enabled applications. Microsoft most certainly are the closest to a monopoly in office software, how many companies buy Word simply to open files sent to them?

barake• 13 years ago

Well hopefully zero, since Microsoft gives away free software to view Word docs (plus other apps for Excel and PPT): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4

In practice, I'm sure lots of copies are sold for the reason you stated.

angularly3• 13 years ago

Google is doing the world a big favor with this, forcing people to upgrade to new browsers and defragmenting the web as a whole... not to mention making life a hell of alot easier for all us web developers. Microsoft can just make their browser autoupdate like everyone else is doing.

emn133• 13 years ago

But if they don't, ironically, google may be helping microsoft by encouraging users to upgrade their PC.

And there's no sign that MS will ship new browsers to old platforms.

djKianoosh• 13 years ago

I'm very happy that at DHS CBP, I don't have to support IE<10 anymore as of a short while ago. It's announcements like these from major names in the industry that help us convince IT folks in the fed to drop support for the old and busted and upgrade to the new hotness...

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

if there is any attempt to specifically lock out older competing browsers

If its not current, I'm not sure that it is "competing" in the sense that would normally be relevant in antitrust/competition law.

quink• 13 years ago

And that would very quickly end up with the question of whether all this isn't greatly Microsoft's doing by dropping IE support for older versions of Windows.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

Google doesn't have monopoly power in the office or e-mail hosting markets, so nothing they do with their apps product can be an abuse of monopoly power. You don't have to play by different rules until you have that power, not while you're aspiring to it. They're not pushing #1 in the browser market either for that matter. Chrome is running on around 1 in 3 devices, and has been losing share to Internet Explorer the past few months.

http://www.w3counter.com/trends

http://gs.statcounter.com/

bpicolo• 13 years ago

The links you posted literally have Chrome as #1.

Adirael• 13 years ago

The problem with IE9 was released two years ago, it's last update was more than a year ago and I don't think it will get any more updates that are not security updates (I don't have time to look now but the updates it got were probably just security updates).

ahoge• 13 years ago

I wonder if Google will ever end up in legal trouble for such a policy.

Why would they? On what basis? Also, even Microsoft doesn't want anyone to support old versions of IE. Microsoft wants to sell Windows licenses, remember?

JohnTHaller6• 13 years ago

IE is 58% of the global desktop market, so monopoly rules would not apply.

Google similarly locks out old versions of Chrome and Firefox as well due to not supporting modern CSS3/HTML5/JS standards.

Remember, Google isn't locking IE out at all. Both IE10 and IE11 will continue to be supported. Google's stated policy is to support the current and prior major release of all supported browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari). Microsoft itself has a similar policy of only supporting the relatively modern versions in their online Office suite. They don't support IE8 but do support IE9. That means Windows XP users can't use IE to access Microsoft's online office suite.

taoufix• 13 years ago

I wonder if Google will ever end up in legal trouble for such a policy.

I don't think so. It's not like they're banning IE9- users from accessing their services. It's just that the content will probably look weird to them.

mratzloff• 13 years ago

For some reason this article resists drawing the obvious conclusion, which is that this is just an effort to turn Google Docs users into Chrome users.

emn133• 13 years ago

See also: Hangouts, which for some reason work well only in chrome, and only in chrome have an addon that integrates with your desktop.

chrismonsanto• 13 years ago

See also: personal blocklists for search, which STILL aren't available for Firefox.

cromwellian• 13 years ago

Supporting older browsers is an enormous drain on productivity, and it also influences design decisions for the worse sometimes by driving the design towards a lowest common denominator there the denominator is broken (e.g. terrible garbage collector in IE6/7)

It's time to move the web forward. I'd say this is an effort to turn Google Docs users into IE11, Firefox, or Chrome users.

JohnTHaller6• 13 years ago

It's not so obvious when you realize how much of CSS3 is unsupported by IE9 but supported by IE10. Or the fact that Google's policy for Google apps is to support the current major version and one back for all supported browsers. They've stated this policy for over 2 years. Now that IE11 is out, IE11 (current) and IE10 (legacy) are supported while IE9 (2 back) is dropped.

l0c0b0x• 13 years ago

- First, Google extends support for Chrome on XP for a few more years - Second, Google ends support for IE8/9.

Sweet move Google/Chrome.

lotyrin• 13 years ago

Yep. Google supports modern web runtime on more of Microsoft's platforms than Microsoft themselves do. People in companies who are stuck on particular OS version, but have the freedom and motivation to adopt new productivity software can probably also download a browser.

Google is making perfect sense here, the real question is why did MS screw this up so bad and integrate OS and web runtime to such a degree they can't support more of their user base?

oneeyedpigeon6• 13 years ago

Yeah, Microsoft's failure to keep supporting XP users (who still make up a whopping third of the entire OS market, 12 years after that OS was released) is this decade's IE6-lock-in. Hopefully, most will move off IE8 onto Chrome, but I'm not holding my breath.

code_duck5• 13 years ago

I've never been able to tell how much of the 'web browser is in the OS!' system was a business move to defeat Netscape and how much was an ill-conceived technical idea. Either way, 'Active Desktop' was pretty darn lousy.

asdasf• 13 years ago

the real question is why did MS screw this up so bad and integrate OS and web runtime to such a degree they can't support more of their user base?

They didn't see it as a screw up, they did it intentionally to push people into upgrading to new windows releases. They did not count on people having no interest in upgrading their computers any more, which is how most people got new windows versions.

Touche2• 13 years ago

I love this. Very reasonable position. The last 2 versions is very reasonable in my opinion. This is common on the mobile app side, developers only supporting the last couple of major OS versions.

And because this is Google they have the weight to make Microsoft think hard about their policies of abandoning their own customers.

ericd• 13 years ago

It's really not reasonable at all for large non tech-driven businesses... If I were running one of those, this kind of behavior would be a strong anxiety driver for me, which would make me stick with Microsoft and their extremely lax upgrade pushes + strong backward compatibility track record. The reason is that businesses rarely have time to drop everything and upgrade something core, and it's not likely to improve their business in any meaningful way. To them, Google is just being a nuisance with this.

com2kid11• 13 years ago

Because HP never upgraded my graphics card drivers on my laptop, I cannot upgrade past IE9 on my Windows 7 machine. (For whatever reason IE10 takes a dependency upon some point release of DirectX that requires driver revisions).

So, umm, gee thanks Google? Ugh.

monitron• 13 years ago

Why not choose a different browser?

com2kid11• 13 years ago

I use a variety of browsers, but some websites work best in some browsers. I've seen sites not work in FF or IE that work great in Opera, sites that fail in IE and work fine in FF, and it is not to uncommon to find sites posted here that only work in Chrome.

FF leaks memory, or at least the plugins that make FF great leak memory. (If I kill Reddit Enhancement Suite and AdBlock+ FF tends to stay alive for more than a few hours).

I'm opposed to Chrome, I prefer a browser that isn't designed to track everything I do. (Although Google already tracks everything that I do, so I'm really not winning much of that battle.)

On my Windows 7 machine, IE is my browser that has no plugins installed. It is really fast, light, and insanely stable. FF is my plugin laden browser, as such it tends to go down in flames with some frequency.

I am annoyed with the IE team for taking a dependency upon DirectX, annoyed with DirectX for taking a dependency upon video card drivers, and annoyed with HP for not updating their drivers. (To be fair, there is a very short list of Laptops that the particular DirectX update doesn't work with, mine just so happens to be on that list!)

msvan• 13 years ago

There's always Firefox and Chrome. No one is forcing you to use Internet Explorer.

lelandbatey• 13 years ago

I think he means his work laptop has these driver limitations, so he's stuck.

cmircea• 13 years ago

So why don't you get the drivers directly from AMD, Intel or NVIDIA, as appropriate? Don't rely on computer manufacturers to supply up to date drivers.

com2kid11• 13 years ago

Laptop with a dedicated GPU. AMD's unified drivers were, last time I checked, still unstable. I am stuck using HP's custom drivers, which never receive updates. This isn't too uncommon for Laptops.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Driver updates aren't always compatible. I had a Dell laptop that would blue-screen consistently with the latest NVIDIA drivers, but was fine using the version Dell provided.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

Use Chrome, FireFox, or blame Microsoft/HP?

Zr40• 13 years ago

IE10 functions even when the fallback video driver is being used, which certainly doesn't provide hardware acceleration. Are you really sure DirectX or the graphics driver is the cause of not being able to install IE10?

Also, DirectX isn't a separately updatable component, at least in recent versions of Windows. It gets updated as part of regular Windows updates and service packs. (Some software still uses the DirectX redistributable as part of its installer, but in recent versions of Windows, this only installs an optional part of the DirectX 9 interface library.)

Outdated graphics drivers can't provide features introduced with a newer DirectX version, but they shouldn't prevent you from installing IE10.

com2kid11• 13 years ago

IE10 will not even install on my machine due to DirectX dependencies.

The DirectX update will not install, it complains about video driver issues. It tells me to download a specific version of my video card driver. Downloading and installing that version of the driver does no good, the DirectX installer still complains.

As for the DirectX update, I had to specifically search on error codes from the IE10 install to find the MSDN page with the DirectX update in it. (The MSDN page is actually what informed me of what video card driver I needed).

This is the problem with discreet graphics cards in laptops that user manufacturer specific drivers. Bleck. Not like the driver works, I have to change versions based upon which game I am playing, it is just like the bad old days on the desktop.

Also the GPU occasionally decides to just stay on 100%, though I think might be a Firefox bug. (IIRC WebGL content in a tab open somewhere)

The crap I go through to have a gaming laptop.

sukuriant• 13 years ago

Reading the chain of issues on your machine, are you sure there's nothing else wrong with your machine? I have had very good experiences with Firefox running for days without issue. I don't have hundreds of tabs like some people, so that might be the reason there.

com2kid11• 13 years ago

Oh I crash FF on every machine I have it on. Hundreds of tabs, and RES is known to leak memory like a sieve. I can watch FF's memory usage grow by the minute as I browse Reddit.

x00542• 13 years ago

Get Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Maxthon, or any number of modern, standards compliant browsers, and use that. Windows != IE, you can use one without the other. And it's not that they are doing it just because. IE9 is missing a ton of needed HTML5 features which can make Google Docs better. Would you like IE9 support or better docs app. Because that's the choice.

com2kid11• 13 years ago

That's easy to say, except the web is so fragmented, different browsers work to different levels of functionality on different sites.

Heck, Pandora.com is most functional in Opera. Go figure.

c23gooey• 13 years ago

I wonder if Google are shooting themselves in the foot a little bit here. The corporate world doesnt move that fast, many companies still use IE7 for instance.

If corporate users cant use gmail etc its going to force them to things like hotmail which im sure will work fine in any version of IE7+

giovannibajo12• 13 years ago

outlook.com only supports IE8+.

IE7 is totally unsupported by anyone, including MS. There are no patch updates, no security bugfixes. There's also zero reasons to use it, as enterprises can upgrade to IE8 and configure a GPO to force IE7 compatibility mode for Intranet site or whatever broken resources they need to access through IE7.

yuhong2• 13 years ago

IE7 is totally unsupported by anyone, including MS. There are no patch updates, no security bugfixes.

This is a myth.

icebraining• 13 years ago

They had a security fix for IE6, 7 and up just last month: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-0...

The patch for IE7 is called IE7-WindowsXP-KB2879017-x86-ENU.exe

stdgy• 13 years ago

Google is effectively utilizing the same strategy Apple used with the iPhone. Namely, ignore the corporate market and capture normal customers. Deliver a great experience and integrate your products into their lives. If you capture enough of them you'll create a backdoor into the corporate marketplace by increasing employee demands for a modern experience.

I think it's a great idea, and it's the only way I see the web moving forward at a reasonable pace.

code_duck5• 13 years ago

IE7 is very difficult to develop modern web apps for, when one even counters difficulties with IE9 vs modern browsers - and IE 8 was a big step up from 7. Any companies poorly administrated enough to still be using IE7 should see moves like this as a wake up call that it's time to move on from 2008.

DigitalSea2• 13 years ago

The only way the web can move forward is if we stop supporting archaic browsers that can't support half the features CSS3 and HTML5 have to offer. Google are the only company game enough to make such a move, they should be praised for this. They've consistently helped push the web forward, IE10 is exciting and a decent version of Internet Explorer, I can't wait until I can build for IE10+

Websockets, HTML5 File API, FileReader API, XMLHttpRequest 2, Web Workers, IndexedDB, requestAnimationFrame, JS Typed Arrays, PageVisibility and a whole list of other awesome things that IE10+ supports. I'm drooling thinking of all of these new API's I soon will be able to use in my web applications without needing shims.

huxley3• 13 years ago

Man, I remember thinking how good it would be when I could stop supporting IE6 ... I think it was last week.

DigitalSea2• 13 years ago

IE6 opens up some painful wounds for me. It was a dark dark time for the web. Still hurts thinking back to the use of transparent PNG's and all the issues to get them to work!

CmonDev• 13 years ago

It would be nice to drop the archaic languages and technologies as well, e.g. CSS, HTML and JavaScript.

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

We support the latest version of Google Chrome (which automatically updates whenever it detects that a new version of the browser is available) as well as the current and prior major release of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis

This policy seems kind of broken since browser versioning went crazy. There is no longer any particular link between a "major" version of a browser and the actual technical changes under the hood that came with it. Chrome has a new "major" version what, monthly? FireFox nearly the same? MS sat on IE6 for 5 years and then iterated nearly a major version every year since, but now seems to be correlating them to new (major or minor) versions of Windows. Tying a support policy to something that is so different between browsers, and mostly a marketing device, seems pretty weird to me.

oneeyedpigeon6• 13 years ago

Not really. They're just saying "we have the manpower (and patience) to test on two different versions of each of these three browsers, and one of our own" rather than "we'll support however many different browser versions these vendors care to release in the past X months" - seems kinda prudent to me.

danielweber• 13 years ago

"Minor" versions of chrome have also completely broken significant features. There seems to be a curse where becoming a powerful browser company makes you do really bad things.

GnarfGnarf• 13 years ago

Kaspersky AV flags the link as "phishing URL".

csmuk9• 13 years ago

This really doesn't make sense apart from for the sake of pushing Chrome, which is using the same bait and switch tactics that Microsoft used in the late 90's and early 00's. Don't be evil eh?

If you look at the FULL chart they reference[1], there are considerably more IE8 users than any Apple device for example and there are more IE8 and IE9 users combined than IE10.

IE8 users are likely on Windows XP as that's the last supported browser version on that. Bye bye XP users unless you install Chrome.

IE9 users are likely on Windows Vista as that's the last supported browser version on that. Bye bye Vista users unless you install Chrome.

This appears to be Google just being a dick, seeing an opportunity and forcing Chrome on people.

To be honest, and I really hate saying this, Microsoft are the only damn company left that has a reasonable support lifecycle these days. Literally everyone else makes a whooshing sound.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201310... (stats are all bullshit on this anyway TBH).

Footnote: I'm posting this from Firefox on OpenBSD before I get accused of being a shill...

oneeyedpigeon6• 13 years ago

Wait, Google are being dicks because they continue to support XP, which Microsoft has abandoned, despite it still being widely used, but Microsoft is the only company with a reasonable support lifecycle? Something about that doesn't add up ...

csmuk9• 13 years ago

They said on day one and in the EULA that it would be supported until 2012 (10 years). They extended that to 12 years to give people time to migrate. They've been more than reasonable.

Since XP came out, I've got married, had three children, owned two houses, owned 3 cars, have gone from a simple black and white Nokia phone that makes calls to a pocket cray, I've watches wars waged between many nation, I've got 160x the bandwidth on my internet connection, I have no CRTs any more, I can just sit down anywhere and get a WiFi connection and my entire library fits in my pocket,

That's a fuck of a long time. All these people really need to just stop whinging like babies and realise how long 12 years is.

fpgeek• 13 years ago

Um, Firefox works just fine on XP and Vista, just like Chrome. I'm sure Google would be happy if people switched to Chrome for Docs, but they're not forcing anyone to.

zobzu3• 13 years ago

half the time i load gdocs in firefox, gdocs tells me firefox is not a supported browser and that i should download chrome right away.

Of course i can ignore the warning, but its pretty clear and if you're a random user you'll be like "oh crap ive to upgrade or gdocs will break".

so yeah, its close enough.

josteink4• 13 years ago

But Google doesn't tell you to download Firefox on every other page they own across the entire internet.

They do so for Chrome. "Upgrade your browser", "Get a faster browser" and all that bullshit we laughed at MS for doing with MSIE.

But now it's Google doing it. Everywhere. With no anti-trust regulatory reactions in sight.

dshep• 13 years ago

This is the most interesting part for me:

"Android has a much bigger fragmentation problem than Internet Explorer. Supporting only the latest 2 Android releases (4.3 and 4.4) would mean targeting less than 3% of the Android devices."

Must be accurate coming from Google.

winslow• 13 years ago

Here is data straight from Google about android fragmentation.

http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Samuel_Michon2• 13 years ago

So it’s actually closer to 2.3%. That’s sad.

cecilpl• 13 years ago

To be fair, the Nexus 5 is the only device that is currently running 4.4, and it's only been available for the last week (I'm still waiting for mine to arrive).

zurn• 13 years ago

The code is out there, they just haven't pushed it to consumers yet.

http://www.androidauthority.com/android-4-4-kitkat-nexus-4-n...

camus2• 13 years ago

You can easily support old Android versions with compatibility libraries, and get most of the features of the latest os.

IE6 will never support ES5 or CSS3.

A 2.1 Android device can support fragments and action bars via libraries.

Comparing the two is just dishonest. Furthermore Android doesnt run on web standards like HTML or CSS.

If you want to compare things then compare the fact that Microsoft dont allow XP users to upgrade IE to the latest version , whereas Google provides compatibility libraries for old devices to use the latest APIs.

ars• 13 years ago

IE6 will never support ... CSS3.

CSS PIE 2.0 comes surprisingly close. Although you do have to add custom rules in the CSS file.

huxley3• 13 years ago

It's not Google:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.ca/p/about-google-operating-sys...

DominikR4• 13 years ago

4.4 was released last week and 4.3 last July.

Even if that weren't the case, your comparison would be dishonest.

Samuel_Michon2• 13 years ago

iOS 7 was released less than 2 months a go. According to Mixpanel, 76% of iOS users have iOS 7. I’d say that’s quite a contrast to Android 4.3 adoption.

https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7

ffrryuu• 13 years ago

Good news for everyone.

Aldo_MX• 13 years ago

That was fast... but I'm really glad as a developer, the less old versions to support the better.

outside1234• 13 years ago

I bet there were cheers in the Office 365 team when they heard this - that is an enterprise non-starter.

quaffapint• 13 years ago

My mega-size company is still in the process of moving from XP to Windows 7. So, our 'new' browser is IE9.

driverdan3• 13 years ago

Why isn't it IE10?

mukundmr• 13 years ago

One of the clients I work for is still stuck on IE9 on Windows 7 as well. I really fail to understand the IT department.

so898• 13 years ago

So next time Google will drop Windows or Mac OSX to introduce their brand new OS system? I hope it will not be the Chrome OS or Android.

superuser2• 13 years ago

Modern IE is still supported. This doesn't make sense.

zobzu3• 13 years ago

actually while the comment author is pushing right now his scenario could very well happen in the medium/long term future..

andyl• 13 years ago

Why the heck doesn't MS auto-update its browsers? Chrome and FF have been doing it for years.

acjohnson55• 13 years ago

Google's not abandoning these people. Microsoft abandoned them long ago. When I hear from QA that something isn't working on IE8, it ruins my entire day. Even IE10 is dreadful to work with. Good riddance!

hbharadwaj• 13 years ago

There are reasons for MS not auto updating IE and leaving update settings to system admins. SAP in my company works only for IE9. One cannot simply drop whatever it is and start working on bug fixes for IE10/11, Firefox and Chrome, irrespective of whose fault it is. Google is being Google in this matter.

zobzu3• 13 years ago

that stats counter graph looks pretty flawed

laichzeit0• 13 years ago

As someone who has psychological scars from having to create and maintain IE6 compatible webapps I can't help but have absolutely no sympathy for the web experience of any IE user.

Google could very well go "We don't support IE. If it happens to render or work at all on your browser, count yourself lucky." and I wouldn't care a damn.

JEVLON• 13 years ago

Even though Chrome automatically updates on people's personal computers, bureaucracies like my university still use a version that is more than a year old (could be over 2 yrs). I hope Google finds a way to force such luddite organisations to update regularly.

xacaxulu• 13 years ago

Forced extinction of a horrible browser. Sounds alright to me.

beauzero• 13 years ago

This could actually lead to more Windows 8/8.1 and PC sales. Don't underestimate the stupidity of the public.

Google Apps drop support for IE9

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