Google have announced that throughout 2010 they will be phasing out support for their Google Apps suite of services in Internet Explorer 6. This means by the end of 2010, services such as Google Mail, Google Calendar and Google Docs (services we have set up for some of our clients) will run slowly or not at all in Internet Explorer 6.
It’s worth mentioning that this does not affect the standard Google search service, only their more sophisticated services that are being held back by the need to ensure any new developments work correctly in Internet Explorer 6 and other out-dated browsers.
Over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers
– Google Apps team
According to the latest browser statistics at the time of writing*, Internet Explorer 6 still has a 10.9% share of the browser market, thought to be mostly government and other large organisations for which it is a large undertaking to update all workstations to newer software versions.
We will be monitoring the statistics closely to see if this and recent bad press towards Internet Explorer will have any significant effect on this market share before making a decision as to whether we will also no longer test websites in Internet Explorer 6 as we currently do.
* Correct at the time of writing based on statistics for December 2009 taken from W3 Schools Browser Statistics.
* As of September 2016, Google Apps has been re-branded to G Suite
