Computer News: Tech Mania

Tech Mania

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 07:44 AM PST

Google has hammered yet another nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6. From March 13th onwards, support for IE6 on Youtube will come to an end. What this essentially means whatever the new features Google will roll out for the video-sharing website will probably not work in IE6.

It all started when Google dropped support for IE6 under Google Docs, moving on when they announced that their popular offline-browsing API, Gears, would be shelved and replicated under HTML5.However, Youtube has a far broader audience than both Docs and Gears combined, so this is the first truly significant move that Google has made to tell the world that IE6 needs to die a peaceful death. Google has also stated that Gmail, it’s popular free webmail client will also cease to support IE6 by the end of the year.

There is already a nag-screen on Youtube when it is accessed from IE6 (or any older browser) that informs users that their browser will soon lack support and lists five alternative browsers – Chrome, Firefox 3.6, Opera 10, Safari 4 and Internet Explorer 8.

byebye iE6 250x119 Google Pushing IE6 out moving to HTML 5

Interestingly, all the browsers that Google recommends support HTML5.However, should Google be praised for its efforts in getting users to upgrade their browsers, or should it continue to support IE 6 – which still holds a staggering 10 percent market share, putting it way above both Opera and Safari combined – despite its lack of HTML 5 support?

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite