As of this morning, visit Youtube using IE6 and you'll see the message "We will be phasing out support for your browser soon. Please upgrade to one of these more modern browsers", with links to Google Chrome, Firefox 3.5, and Internet Explorer 8.
The links appear in random order, so nobody can accuse Google of promoting their own browser over another. Looks like they're thinking the same thing as the rest of us - we don't care what browser you use at this point, as long as it's not IE6!
With HTML5 well on the way and Google Chrome OS reputed to hit shelves in the second half of next year, this is a clear sign that the web is about to change - for the better.
Controversially, the message might not be entirely accurate - "soon" may well mean "now", as we've found that since the message appeared we can't watch videos using IE6.
We know that the majority of IE6 users are stuck on corporate networks, unable to upgrade because of security restrictions or because they're using internal web apps designed for IE6 that would be too costly to upgrade.
Will we see these users switching to the likes of Chrome and Firefox as their primary browser? Either of these browsers now stands to snap up IE6's 15% market share.
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20.5% of our current site audience.
ReplyDeleteI think the w3schools stats are more than a little skewed from what most websites are experiencing in terms of browser share, since their audience is developers and designers.
ReplyDeleteEither way, 20% is a HUGE number of users. It would be wonderful to see Chrome and Firefox take a bite out of that.