Google 'discourages' users of old browsers 12 years ago
As a web dev, I'm very well aware of the pain of supporting old browsers. I appreciate what Google did for that very selfish reason.
Google provide a "free" service ("free" as in they don't directly charge you for it, they show you ads and have advertisers pay for it instead). Users sure have the freedom to use browsers of their choice and search engines of their choice, so is Google entitled to similar kind of freedom -- they are free to set their own house rules, whether that's "old homepage for old browsers" or "special homepage for chrome". As a user of such a "free" service either you suck it up or leave. Bitching about something like this is like getting a free lunch and complaining there's not enough salt, imho.