Last month we blogged about the battle to drop IE6, now it seems Microsoft wants people to drop IE6 too even though their announcement to support IE6 until 2014 seems to contradict their statement.
Microsoft’s general manager for IE, Amy Bazdukas, let the world know that the folks over at Microsoft do feel our pain. “Friends don’t let friends use IE6″ she said. She stated that they were doing all they could to push IE6 back and get more people using the latest version of IE. “It’s certainly part of our approach to consumers to get them to upgrade to IE8″
Don’t get your hopes up though, Microsoft won’t be ditching IE6 any time soon, they plan to stop all support for it in 2014, at the same time it cuts all ties with the XP operating system. When asked why she thought there are still so many people using IE6 (40% of IE users are using 6, more than both versions 7 and 
she mentioned piracy in countries such as India and China. “There’s a reluctance [among people using counterfeit Windows] to use Automatic Updates. Rather than download updates, often the solution to problems is to re-image the machine using the pirated, pre-XP SP2 counterfeit. That also helps to drive the persistence of IE6″ she added.
So while Microsoft are aware of our pain and as much as they would like to help us out the situation will remain the same for another 5 years! You can join the fight so stop supporting IE6 at http://idroppedie6.com/
