A shocking email from Google just blasted into my inbox. As an SEO and Webmaster, I have the latest and greatest web browsers installed on my machine. However, I know about 70 individuals who have never needed to upgrade their machine or are now being forced to if they wish to continue using Google Apps.
Google’s email clearly states that they will no longer support older browsers as they move to start using HTML5, a markup language colleges aren’t even teaching yet. I’m a huge fan of technology, but serving hundreds of local businesses who use Google Apps for email, websites, document storage, calendars and so forth, I know that this may end up being a real shock to the system for people who are still on eMachines that crash when you load IE8, Fx3.5 or any newer browser.
Here’s the email:
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
What’s Your Take on Google’s Browser Support Notification?
Share your feedback below.
Tags: google apps, older browsers
Good news – it’s about time we started prompting people to use newer browsers. It will save a lot of time, energy and money for developers, plus make it easier to control page layout for SEO.
I have an IE6 instance that runs in Wine on my Mac for the sole purpose of checking on what’s “broken” when I build a website. Eventually, I switch to windows and check my work on 7 and 8. Every designer and developer in the world must be cheering Google’s effort to help push that nearly decade old clunker over a cliff.
On the other hand, might the ~20% of people using IE6 find that Chrome takes care of their situation? Chrome has a really light footprint and is certain to run Google apps flawlessly. Chrome may not be as robust as the current versions of FF and IE, but surely it must work better than IE6?
I agree Dave, Chrome isn’t as robust as the current Fx and IE versions, but robust can also be defined as “clunky”. Thanks to the SEOQuake Chrome extension, I’m on Chrome about 90% of the time. The other 10% is when I can’t remember a password cached in Fx or when I need to use PPC Web Spy.
It’s okay that you’re Mac user. I won’t hold it against you.
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I had this email in my inbox as well, I guess this is going to help designers and developers a lot, because browsers like IE6 are so dumb that they take too much time to make the output same like other browsers.
Thanks for the comment Nauman, and yes, IE6 isn’t a good browser for more than one reason (security issues being the most important). By the way, love the design of your site. I’m curious as to why you’re not using permalinks, like I described in SEO in a Day? Also, you’ve repeated your target keyword twice in a row on this page: http://www.naumanakhtar.com/?p=170 (the WP title is followed by the first sentence that starts with your KWD). I’d consider moving the keyword to 2nd second sentence and wrapping a good ole’ STRONG tag around it.
Cheers,
Steve