19 ms·

Google Apps drop support for IE9

251 points by ritchiea 13y ago

davidjgraph 13y ago
"The policy is not useful for Internet Explorer, which doesn't update automatically and has limited OS support." First point is wrong, from IE 11 the default is automatic updates. The second point is an unusual way to phrase it... On the overall topic, I find this strange. Google Docs seems to make efforts to target Microsoft Office users by writing importers for what are very complex formats. It then pretty much cuts itself off from most medium and larger Microsoft based companies, very few of which, in my experience, are up to IE 10. I wonder if this says something about them really targeting the small, but fastest growing companies and anything really big is nice, but not the priority.
- emn13 13y ago
  Alternatively, they may just not have thought about it in that much detail. Yep, I'm betting on unintended consequence rather than deep plan here. It would certainly be pretty unwise to exclude the best-paying customers intentionally.
  - Touche 13y ago
    I bet they've more than thought about it. I bet they have data that shows them their customers care more about using Google Docs than they care about using IE9, and will switch browsers.
  - RussianCow 13y ago
    I also don't think a company as big as Google would make such an important decision without considering the consequences. This decision wasn't made on a whim, they've clearly given it some thought.
- ajross 13y ago
  I think that's missing the point. If a "Microsoft-based company" is mandating IE9 and disallowing browser installs, they're not the sort of shop likely to be trying new office suite software (!) any time soon. Conservative markets are conservative, in general you simply can't market replacement products to them directly. The only people switching older systems to Docs are the people willing to try new stuff, more or less by definition. A Chrome or Firefox install for these folks isn't nearly as invasive as junking Word and Excel is.
  - zarify 13y ago
    This isn't strictly true. I work in education and for a large part of our state the network and operating environment is managed by the education department, but services are largely left up to schools. This means we're left with IE9 as the default web browser but lots of students use Google Docs for their work (not to mention staff). I know other states look at or are using Docs across the board.
    - myko 13y ago
      And Chrome/Firefox aren't installed on those machines?
      - zarify 13y ago
        No. The story I've gotten when I pursued this with the department is the update cycle is too rapid to bother and automated deployment too difficult to manage. The kids that use them tend to install Chrome themselves since it will install into their profile and they don't need permissions to the rest of the system. A couple of the kids use Firefox Portable. Since a sad number of our staff (and a fair few students) have trouble just logging into a computer, this isn't really an option for the masses.
  - dougmccune 13y ago
    but this misses the point that often in these companies what you can install on your machine is incredibly locked down, which makes SaaS the only way to easily get new apps you can actually use. You may very well have users who want new software, but the only way they can do so is through the web, since installing new desktop software requires rolling a boulder up a hill.
    - taude 13y ago
      Or, just wait until your SaaS is cutoff by the company firewall, something done at large companies with products like DropBox, Google Docs, Evernote, etc...
- michaelmior 13y ago
  Even if the default is to automatically update starting at IE 11 it's irrelevant given that IE 11 is the newest version. Although it is a welcome change going forward.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  That description is pretty accurate. 58% of the market is using Internet Explorer currently. Of Internet Explorer users, the breakdown by version is: Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.0: 2.57% Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0: 32.63% Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0 : 16.34% Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 : 37.48% Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 : 2.26% Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 : 8.49% Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 : 0.23% (Source: NetMarketShare. Note that this is global so skewed a bit by all the pirated copies of Windows XP in China, etc) IE is a bit of a mess browser-wise because we've nearly always had a ton of users not on the latest version. The reason? IE doesn't automatically update to a later version. Every other browser on Windows and Linux does. The only other exception is Safari on Mac OS X, which has specific versions artificially pegged to the OS like IE is with Windows. That's why we have 38% of IE users on an outdated browser like IE8 and 8.5% on IE6. Like IE8, IE9 is lacking in many important areas that users of Firefox, Google Chrome, etc don't need to worry about. IE9 lacks several CSS3 tags that have been supported for a while by Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. IE9 lacks columns support, animation support, transform, and transition support. IE10 and IE11 properly support it. In short, Google can keep making Google Apps better by dropping support for dead browsers like IE9. I mean dead as in they're not being developed further. They're stuck with broken or non-existent CSS3 support. And, as pointed out by others, the type of organization that's going to try out Google Apps as a MS Office replacement, isn't the type of organization that's going to be stuck on IE8/9.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    NetMarketShare's stats wildly contradict everyone else's [1]. If you believe them, IE is used almost 3 times as much as Chrome/Firefox. If you believe anyone else, Chrome is ahead of IE. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...
    - JohnTHaller 13y ago
      NetMarketShare's stats are more accurate than any of the others listed there. The mere fact that W3Counter, StatCounter, and Wikimedia are listed there shows that whoever compiled it has no understanding of global web stats. Chrome is only the dominant browser in two countries and elsewhere only dominant amongst a specific subset of demographics.
- Yaggo 13y ago
  Industry-leading professionals don't make technology decisions based on uneducated choices of big masses.
  - oblio 13y ago
    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy Slightly taken out of context, but still relevant: "The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife."
- jotm 13y ago
  I thought IE updates through Windows Update? Regardless, what a piece if shit! Just fired it up to check the version (it's version 9, apparently no Windows Update update) and it's so goddamn slow! I'm now on 100mbps fiber, Firefox and Chrome are pretty much instant, IE takes 10 seconds to open the MSN page, and another 20 to perform a search from the address bar in Bing and open the first result (a Microsoft.com page!). Unbelievable.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    I think you're doing something wrong. Even my low memory ceiling IE9 test VM doesn't behave like that and I'm on 12mbit ADSL.
    - code_duck 13y ago
      Similar to when people believe that a new windows version boots faster than the other, a VM is not a real world test case. Typically windows performance degrades significantly over time in terms of program launch and boot up time. Try using that VM as your main computing environment for 8 months and then check IE launch time.
      - csmuk 13y ago
        That's all uninformed hokum. Firstly newer versions of windows do boot quicker. But TBH I don't reboot them. Workstations get left on. Laptops get hibernated so neither is much of a problem. That's a stupid metric. Anyway, read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fast-boot-times-in-windows-8.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fas... My primary laptop is running Windows 7 as installed in 2010. I haven't done a thing to it. It's fine. I've gone through Visual Studio 2010 - 2013 on it as well. It has a full SQL server installation and several virtual machines. Still like lightning. Not only that I have a Dell workstation sitting in the office that hasn't been touched since installed in 2010 that I use for 4-5 hours a day via RDP over a shitty connection. Absolutely fine. Windows is only slow if you fuck something up, install a million toolbars or are a mac user or Linux user trying for trendy Microsoft bashing for upvotes.
- josteink 13y ago
  First point is wrong, from IE 11 the default is automatic updates. Actually, I think that is from IE 10, or at least so it is on my machine.
- code_duck 13y ago
  Are those updates frequent and steady feature updates, a la Chrome, or merely security and bug fix updates? The former would be a big change from previous IE. The latter would mean Google's statement is still basically accurate, and is what most Windows systems have been doing for years with Windows update.
- eitally 13y ago
  I don't think you're actually correct anymore. There's a huge push going on in enterprise right now to get everyone upgraded from WinXP to at least (and typically) Win7, and many companies are including an upgrade to IE10 or IE11 in part of the desktop image. Generally speaking, unless there are specific reasons for requiring an older version of the browser, they're going with the newest available and allowing it to auto-update. You should feel good knowing that the predominant reason why this sea change has occurred is because of developers and the pace of the modern web: devs are refusing to target old versions of browsers, especially IE, anymore. In edge cases where a specific browser+version is required, that's pushed to the affected user(s) as a one-off. My team, anecdotally, don't even test against IE for internal-only apps anymore. We make sure things work with FF & Chrome current and current-1 and that's it. For external facing apps we cross-test against IE current and current-1, too, but that's the minority of our work.
filipedeschamps 13y ago
God bless Google for pushing the internet forward.
freehunter 13y ago
I wonder if Google will ever end up in legal trouble for such a policy. While I don't support the notion that any company or person should have to support any version of OS or browser, knowing the massive effect that Google has on the web market and the fact that they have their own browser, if there is any attempt to specifically lock out older competing browsers, the FTC or EU might have questions about that. If you're pushing to be number one in a massive market, you have to play by different rules (as Microsoft found out in the 90's). Google hasn't been playing nice with Microsoft for a while (see how many Google apps are in the Windows Phone store, the issue where they locked out IE Mobile from viewing Google Maps, or how they treat Windows Phone trying to interface with YouTube). In a way it's nice to see Microsoft reaping what they've sown so long ago, but in another way it's incredibly frustrating from an end user perspective to be someone who likes Microsoft software (such as Windows Phone) and also enjoy using Google services like Maps and Youtube. Google should be careful with how much they're pushing against Microsoft, especially with Microsoft's new market position versus Google. Microsoft is hardly the monopoly anymore.
- davidjgraph 13y ago
  This market if office software, and web enabled applications. Microsoft most certainly are the closest to a monopoly in office software, how many companies buy Word simply to open files sent to them?
  - barake 13y ago
    Well hopefully zero, since Microsoft gives away free software to view Word docs (plus other apps for Excel and PPT): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4 In practice, I'm sure lots of copies are sold for the reason you stated.
- angularly 13y ago
  Google is doing the world a big favor with this, forcing people to upgrade to new browsers and defragmenting the web as a whole... not to mention making life a hell of alot easier for all us web developers. Microsoft can just make their browser autoupdate like everyone else is doing.
mratzloff 13y ago
For some reason this article resists drawing the obvious conclusion, which is that this is just an effort to turn Google Docs users into Chrome users.
- emn13 13y ago
  See also: Hangouts, which for some reason work well only in chrome, and only in chrome have an addon that integrates with your desktop.
  - chrismonsanto 13y ago
    See also: personal blocklists for search, which STILL aren't available for Firefox.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Supporting older browsers is an enormous drain on productivity, and it also influences design decisions for the worse sometimes by driving the design towards a lowest common denominator there the denominator is broken (e.g. terrible garbage collector in IE6/7) It's time to move the web forward. I'd say this is an effort to turn Google Docs users into IE11, Firefox, or Chrome users.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  It's not so obvious when you realize how much of CSS3 is unsupported by IE9 but supported by IE10. Or the fact that Google's policy for Google apps is to support the current major version and one back for all supported browsers. They've stated this policy for over 2 years. Now that IE11 is out, IE11 (current) and IE10 (legacy) are supported while IE9 (2 back) is dropped.
l0c0b0x 13y ago
- First, Google extends support for Chrome on XP for a few more years - Second, Google ends support for IE8/9. Sweet move Google/Chrome.
- lotyrin 13y ago
  Yep. Google supports modern web runtime on more of Microsoft's platforms than Microsoft themselves do. People in companies who are stuck on particular OS version, but have the freedom and motivation to adopt new productivity software can probably also download a browser. Google is making perfect sense here, the real question is why did MS screw this up so bad and integrate OS and web runtime to such a degree they can't support more of their user base?
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    Yeah, Microsoft's failure to keep supporting XP users (who still make up a whopping third of the entire OS market, 12 years after that OS was released) is this decade's IE6-lock-in. Hopefully, most will move off IE8 onto Chrome, but I'm not holding my breath.
    - sounds 13y ago
      If China is any indication, XP users will end up paying not for the OS (pirate!) but for continuing support. I would laugh if some virus writers switched sides and start offering up patches for XP. They may know the core OS better than the developers still working in Redmond by now.
  - code_duck 13y ago
    I've never been able to tell how much of the 'web browser is in the OS!' system was a business move to defeat Netscape and how much was an ill-conceived technical idea. Either way, 'Active Desktop' was pretty darn lousy.
  - asdasf 13y ago
    >the real question is why did MS screw this up so bad and integrate OS and web runtime to such a degree they can't support more of their user base? They didn't see it as a screw up, they did it intentionally to push people into upgrading to new windows releases. They did not count on people having no interest in upgrading their computers any more, which is how most people got new windows versions.
Touche 13y ago
I love this. Very reasonable position. The last 2 versions is very reasonable in my opinion. This is common on the mobile app side, developers only supporting the last couple of major OS versions. And because this is Google they have the weight to make Microsoft think hard about their policies of abandoning their own customers.
- ericd 13y ago
  It's really not reasonable at all for large non tech-driven businesses... If I were running one of those, this kind of behavior would be a strong anxiety driver for me, which would make me stick with Microsoft and their extremely lax upgrade pushes + strong backward compatibility track record. The reason is that businesses rarely have time to drop everything and upgrade something core, and it's not likely to improve their business in any meaningful way. To them, Google is just being a nuisance with this.
com2kid 13y ago
Because HP never upgraded my graphics card drivers on my laptop, I cannot upgrade past IE9 on my Windows 7 machine. (For whatever reason IE10 takes a dependency upon some point release of DirectX that requires driver revisions). So, umm, gee thanks Google? Ugh.
- monitron 13y ago
  Why not choose a different browser?
  - com2kid 13y ago
    I use a variety of browsers, but some websites work best in some browsers. I've seen sites not work in FF or IE that work great in Opera, sites that fail in IE and work fine in FF, and it is not to uncommon to find sites posted here that only work in Chrome. FF leaks memory, or at least the plugins that make FF great leak memory. (If I kill Reddit Enhancement Suite and AdBlock+ FF tends to stay alive for more than a few hours). I'm opposed to Chrome, I prefer a browser that isn't designed to track everything I do. (Although Google already tracks everything that I do, so I'm really not winning much of that battle.) On my Windows 7 machine, IE is my browser that has no plugins installed. It is really fast, light, and insanely stable. FF is my plugin laden browser, as such it tends to go down in flames with some frequency. I am annoyed with the IE team for taking a dependency upon DirectX, annoyed with DirectX for taking a dependency upon video card drivers, and annoyed with HP for not updating their drivers. (To be fair, there is a very short list of Laptops that the particular DirectX update doesn't work with, mine just so happens to be on that list!)
    - driverdan 13y ago
      Open FF in privacy mode without plugins enabled. Or disable Chrome's "tracking" mechanisms (there aren't many). Problem solved.
      - com2kid 13y ago
        > Open FF in privacy mode without plugins enabled. Then the internet is a much worse experience! I have those plugins installed for a reason; Flash, AdBlock+ and Reddit Enhancement Suite.
c23gooey 13y ago
I wonder if Google are shooting themselves in the foot a little bit here. The corporate world doesnt move that fast, many companies still use IE7 for instance. If corporate users cant use gmail etc its going to force them to things like hotmail which im sure will work fine in any version of IE7+
- giovannibajo1 13y ago
  outlook.com only supports IE8+. IE7 is totally unsupported by anyone, including MS. There are no patch updates, no security bugfixes. There's also zero reasons to use it, as enterprises can upgrade to IE8 and configure a GPO to force IE7 compatibility mode for Intranet site or whatever broken resources they need to access through IE7.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    >IE7 is totally unsupported by anyone, including MS. There are no patch updates, no security bugfixes. This is a myth.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    They had a security fix for IE6, 7 and up just last month: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-080 https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-0... The patch for IE7 is called IE7-WindowsXP-KB2879017-x86-ENU.exe
- stdgy 13y ago
  Google is effectively utilizing the same strategy Apple used with the iPhone. Namely, ignore the corporate market and capture normal customers. Deliver a great experience and integrate your products into their lives. If you capture enough of them you'll create a backdoor into the corporate marketplace by increasing employee demands for a modern experience. I think it's a great idea, and it's the only way I see the web moving forward at a reasonable pace.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 13y ago
DigitalSea 13y ago
The only way the web can move forward is if we stop supporting archaic browsers that can't support half the features CSS3 and HTML5 have to offer. Google are the only company game enough to make such a move, they should be praised for this. They've consistently helped push the web forward, IE10 is exciting and a decent version of Internet Explorer, I can't wait until I can build for IE10+ Websockets, HTML5 File API, FileReader API, XMLHttpRequest 2, Web Workers, IndexedDB, requestAnimationFrame, JS Typed Arrays, PageVisibility and a whole list of other awesome things that IE10+ supports. I'm drooling thinking of all of these new API's I soon will be able to use in my web applications without needing shims.
- huxley 13y ago
  Man, I remember thinking how good it would be when I could stop supporting IE6 ... I think it was last week.
  - DigitalSea 13y ago
    IE6 opens up some painful wounds for me. It was a dark dark time for the web. Still hurts thinking back to the use of transparent PNG's and all the issues to get them to work!
    - kamjam 13y ago
      I don't think it was. IE pushed a lot of boundaries back in the day and it was up to others to innovate. Just look at how far we have come since Firefox was released. I understand that MS using it's dominant position was bad, but it's exactly what Google does too. It's business and you take every advantage you have.
      - Mahn 13y ago
        > IE pushed a lot of boundaries back in the day And then fell asleep for years. If it hadn't been for Mozilla, people would still be using IE6.
zmmmmm 13y ago
> We support the latest version of Google Chrome (which automatically updates whenever it detects that a new version of the browser is available) as well as the current and prior major release of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis This policy seems kind of broken since browser versioning went crazy. There is no longer any particular link between a "major" version of a browser and the actual technical changes under the hood that came with it. Chrome has a new "major" version what, monthly? FireFox nearly the same? MS sat on IE6 for 5 years and then iterated nearly a major version every year since, but now seems to be correlating them to new (major or minor) versions of Windows. Tying a support policy to something that is so different between browsers, and mostly a marketing device, seems pretty weird to me.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Not really. They're just saying "we have the manpower (and patience) to test on two different versions of each of these three browsers, and one of our own" rather than "we'll support however many different browser versions these vendors care to release in the past X months" - seems kinda prudent to me.
- danielweber 13y ago
  "Minor" versions of chrome have also completely broken significant features. There seems to be a curse where becoming a powerful browser company makes you do really bad things.
GnarfGnarf 13y ago
Kaspersky AV flags the link as "phishing URL".
csmuk 13y ago
This really doesn't make sense apart from for the sake of pushing Chrome, which is using the same bait and switch tactics that Microsoft used in the late 90's and early 00's. Don't be evil eh? If you look at the FULL chart they reference[1], there are considerably more IE8 users than any Apple device for example and there are more IE8 and IE9 users combined than IE10. IE8 users are likely on Windows XP as that's the last supported browser version on that. Bye bye XP users unless you install Chrome. IE9 users are likely on Windows Vista as that's the last supported browser version on that. Bye bye Vista users unless you install Chrome. This appears to be Google just being a dick, seeing an opportunity and forcing Chrome on people. To be honest, and I really hate saying this, Microsoft are the only damn company left that has a reasonable support lifecycle these days. Literally everyone else makes a whooshing sound. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201310-201311-bar http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201310... (stats are all bullshit on this anyway TBH). Footnote: I'm posting this from Firefox on OpenBSD before I get accused of being a shill...
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Wait, Google are being dicks because they continue to support XP, which Microsoft has abandoned, despite it still being widely used, but Microsoft is the only company with a reasonable support lifecycle? Something about that doesn't add up ...
  - csmuk 13y ago
    They said on day one and in the EULA that it would be supported until 2012 (10 years). They extended that to 12 years to give people time to migrate. They've been more than reasonable. Since XP came out, I've got married, had three children, owned two houses, owned 3 cars, have gone from a simple black and white Nokia phone that makes calls to a pocket cray, I've watches wars waged between many nation, I've got 160x the bandwidth on my internet connection, I have no CRTs any more, I can just sit down anywhere and get a WiFi connection and my entire library fits in my pocket, That's a fuck of a long time. All these people really need to just stop whinging like babies and realise how long 12 years is.
dshep 13y ago
This is the most interesting part for me: "Android has a much bigger fragmentation problem than Internet Explorer. Supporting only the latest 2 Android releases (4.3 and 4.4) would mean targeting less than 3% of the Android devices." Must be accurate coming from Google.
- winslow 13y ago
  Here is data straight from Google about android fragmentation. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    So it’s actually closer to 2.3%. That’s sad.
- cecilpl 13y ago
  To be fair, the Nexus 5 is the only device that is currently running 4.4, and it's only been available for the last week (I'm still waiting for mine to arrive).
  - zurn 13y ago
    The code is out there, they just haven't pushed it to consumers yet. http://www.androidauthority.com/android-4-4-kitkat-nexus-4-nexus-7-download-unofficially-313352/ http://www.androidauthority.com/android-4-4-kitkat-nexus-4-n...
- camus2 13y ago
  You can easily support old Android versions with compatibility libraries, and get most of the features of the latest os. IE6 will never support ES5 or CSS3. A 2.1 Android device can support fragments and action bars via libraries. Comparing the two is just dishonest. Furthermore Android doesnt run on web standards like HTML or CSS. If you want to compare things then compare the fact that Microsoft dont allow XP users to upgrade IE to the latest version , whereas Google provides compatibility libraries for old devices to use the latest APIs.
ffrryuu 13y ago
Good news for everyone.
Aldo_MX 13y ago
That was fast... but I'm really glad as a developer, the less old versions to support the better.
outside1234 13y ago
I bet there were cheers in the Office 365 team when they heard this - that is an enterprise non-starter.
quaffapint 13y ago
My mega-size company is still in the process of moving from XP to Windows 7. So, our 'new' browser is IE9.
- driverdan 13y ago
  Why isn't it IE10?
- mukundmr 13y ago
  One of the clients I work for is still stuck on IE9 on Windows 7 as well. I really fail to understand the IT department.
so898 13y ago
So next time Google will drop Windows or Mac OSX to introduce their brand new OS system? I hope it will not be the Chrome OS or Android.
- superuser2 13y ago
  Modern IE is still supported. This doesn't make sense.
  - zobzu 13y ago
    actually while the comment author is pushing right now his scenario could very well happen in the medium/long term future..
andyl 13y ago
Why the heck doesn't MS auto-update its browsers? Chrome and FF have been doing it for years.
acjohnson55 13y ago
Google's not abandoning these people. Microsoft abandoned them long ago. When I hear from QA that something isn't working on IE8, it ruins my entire day. Even IE10 is dreadful to work with. Good riddance!
hbharadwaj 13y ago
There are reasons for MS not auto updating IE and leaving update settings to system admins. SAP in my company works only for IE9. One cannot simply drop whatever it is and start working on bug fixes for IE10/11, Firefox and Chrome, irrespective of whose fault it is. Google is being Google in this matter.
zobzu 13y ago
that stats counter graph looks pretty flawed
laichzeit0 13y ago
As someone who has psychological scars from having to create and maintain IE6 compatible webapps I can't help but have absolutely no sympathy for the web experience of any IE user. Google could very well go "We don't support IE. If it happens to render or work at all on your browser, count yourself lucky." and I wouldn't care a damn.
JEVLON 13y ago
Even though Chrome automatically updates on people's personal computers, bureaucracies like my university still use a version that is more than a year old (could be over 2 yrs). I hope Google finds a way to force such luddite organisations to update regularly.
xacaxulu 13y ago
Forced extinction of a horrible browser. Sounds alright to me.
beauzero 13y ago
This could actually lead to more Windows 8/8.1 and PC sales. Don't underestimate the stupidity of the public.

251 points by ritchiea 13y ago

"The policy is not useful for Internet Explorer, which doesn't update automatically and has limited OS support." First point is wrong, from IE 11 the default is automatic updates. The second point is an unusual way to phrase it... On the overall topic, I find this strange. Google Docs seems to make efforts to target Microsoft Office users by writing importers for what are very complex formats. It then pretty much cuts itself off from most medium and larger Microsoft based companies, very few of which, in my experience, are up to IE 10. I wonder if this says something about them really targeting the small, but fastest growing companies and anything really big is nice, but not the priority.

emn13 13y ago
Alternatively, they may just not have thought about it in that much detail. Yep, I'm betting on unintended consequence rather than deep plan here. It would certainly be pretty unwise to exclude the best-paying customers intentionally.
- Touche 13y ago
  I bet they've more than thought about it. I bet they have data that shows them their customers care more about using Google Docs than they care about using IE9, and will switch browsers.
- RussianCow 13y ago
  I also don't think a company as big as Google would make such an important decision without considering the consequences. This decision wasn't made on a whim, they've clearly given it some thought.
ajross 13y ago
I think that's missing the point. If a "Microsoft-based company" is mandating IE9 and disallowing browser installs, they're not the sort of shop likely to be trying new office suite software (!) any time soon. Conservative markets are conservative, in general you simply can't market replacement products to them directly. The only people switching older systems to Docs are the people willing to try new stuff, more or less by definition. A Chrome or Firefox install for these folks isn't nearly as invasive as junking Word and Excel is.
- zarify 13y ago
  This isn't strictly true. I work in education and for a large part of our state the network and operating environment is managed by the education department, but services are largely left up to schools. This means we're left with IE9 as the default web browser but lots of students use Google Docs for their work (not to mention staff). I know other states look at or are using Docs across the board.
  - myko 13y ago
    And Chrome/Firefox aren't installed on those machines?
    - zarify 13y ago
      No. The story I've gotten when I pursued this with the department is the update cycle is too rapid to bother and automated deployment too difficult to manage. The kids that use them tend to install Chrome themselves since it will install into their profile and they don't need permissions to the rest of the system. A couple of the kids use Firefox Portable. Since a sad number of our staff (and a fair few students) have trouble just logging into a computer, this isn't really an option for the masses.
- dougmccune 13y ago
  but this misses the point that often in these companies what you can install on your machine is incredibly locked down, which makes SaaS the only way to easily get new apps you can actually use. You may very well have users who want new software, but the only way they can do so is through the web, since installing new desktop software requires rolling a boulder up a hill.
  - taude 13y ago
    Or, just wait until your SaaS is cutoff by the company firewall, something done at large companies with products like DropBox, Google Docs, Evernote, etc...
michaelmior 13y ago
Even if the default is to automatically update starting at IE 11 it's irrelevant given that IE 11 is the newest version. Although it is a welcome change going forward.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
That description is pretty accurate. 58% of the market is using Internet Explorer currently. Of Internet Explorer users, the breakdown by version is: Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.0: 2.57% Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0: 32.63% Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0 : 16.34% Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 : 37.48% Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 : 2.26% Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 : 8.49% Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 : 0.23% (Source: NetMarketShare. Note that this is global so skewed a bit by all the pirated copies of Windows XP in China, etc) IE is a bit of a mess browser-wise because we've nearly always had a ton of users not on the latest version. The reason? IE doesn't automatically update to a later version. Every other browser on Windows and Linux does. The only other exception is Safari on Mac OS X, which has specific versions artificially pegged to the OS like IE is with Windows. That's why we have 38% of IE users on an outdated browser like IE8 and 8.5% on IE6. Like IE8, IE9 is lacking in many important areas that users of Firefox, Google Chrome, etc don't need to worry about. IE9 lacks several CSS3 tags that have been supported for a while by Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. IE9 lacks columns support, animation support, transform, and transition support. IE10 and IE11 properly support it. In short, Google can keep making Google Apps better by dropping support for dead browsers like IE9. I mean dead as in they're not being developed further. They're stuck with broken or non-existent CSS3 support. And, as pointed out by others, the type of organization that's going to try out Google Apps as a MS Office replacement, isn't the type of organization that's going to be stuck on IE8/9.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  NetMarketShare's stats wildly contradict everyone else's [1]. If you believe them, IE is used almost 3 times as much as Chrome/Firefox. If you believe anyone else, Chrome is ahead of IE. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    NetMarketShare's stats are more accurate than any of the others listed there. The mere fact that W3Counter, StatCounter, and Wikimedia are listed there shows that whoever compiled it has no understanding of global web stats. Chrome is only the dominant browser in two countries and elsewhere only dominant amongst a specific subset of demographics.
Yaggo 13y ago
Industry-leading professionals don't make technology decisions based on uneducated choices of big masses.
- oblio 13y ago
  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy Slightly taken out of context, but still relevant: "The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife."
jotm 13y ago
I thought IE updates through Windows Update? Regardless, what a piece if shit! Just fired it up to check the version (it's version 9, apparently no Windows Update update) and it's so goddamn slow! I'm now on 100mbps fiber, Firefox and Chrome are pretty much instant, IE takes 10 seconds to open the MSN page, and another 20 to perform a search from the address bar in Bing and open the first result (a Microsoft.com page!). Unbelievable.
- csmuk 13y ago
  I think you're doing something wrong. Even my low memory ceiling IE9 test VM doesn't behave like that and I'm on 12mbit ADSL.
  - code_duck 13y ago
    Similar to when people believe that a new windows version boots faster than the other, a VM is not a real world test case. Typically windows performance degrades significantly over time in terms of program launch and boot up time. Try using that VM as your main computing environment for 8 months and then check IE launch time.
    - csmuk 13y ago
      That's all uninformed hokum. Firstly newer versions of windows do boot quicker. But TBH I don't reboot them. Workstations get left on. Laptops get hibernated so neither is much of a problem. That's a stupid metric. Anyway, read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fast-boot-times-in-windows-8.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fas... My primary laptop is running Windows 7 as installed in 2010. I haven't done a thing to it. It's fine. I've gone through Visual Studio 2010 - 2013 on it as well. It has a full SQL server installation and several virtual machines. Still like lightning. Not only that I have a Dell workstation sitting in the office that hasn't been touched since installed in 2010 that I use for 4-5 hours a day via RDP over a shitty connection. Absolutely fine. Windows is only slow if you fuck something up, install a million toolbars or are a mac user or Linux user trying for trendy Microsoft bashing for upvotes.
josteink 13y ago
First point is wrong, from IE 11 the default is automatic updates. Actually, I think that is from IE 10, or at least so it is on my machine.
code_duck 13y ago
Are those updates frequent and steady feature updates, a la Chrome, or merely security and bug fix updates? The former would be a big change from previous IE. The latter would mean Google's statement is still basically accurate, and is what most Windows systems have been doing for years with Windows update.
eitally 13y ago
I don't think you're actually correct anymore. There's a huge push going on in enterprise right now to get everyone upgraded from WinXP to at least (and typically) Win7, and many companies are including an upgrade to IE10 or IE11 in part of the desktop image. Generally speaking, unless there are specific reasons for requiring an older version of the browser, they're going with the newest available and allowing it to auto-update. You should feel good knowing that the predominant reason why this sea change has occurred is because of developers and the pace of the modern web: devs are refusing to target old versions of browsers, especially IE, anymore. In edge cases where a specific browser+version is required, that's pushed to the affected user(s) as a one-off. My team, anecdotally, don't even test against IE for internal-only apps anymore. We make sure things work with FF & Chrome current and current-1 and that's it. For external facing apps we cross-test against IE current and current-1, too, but that's the minority of our work.

filipedeschamps 13y ago

God bless Google for pushing the internet forward.

freehunter 13y ago

I wonder if Google will ever end up in legal trouble for such a policy. While I don't support the notion that any company or person should have to support any version of OS or browser, knowing the massive effect that Google has on the web market and the fact that they have their own browser, if there is any attempt to specifically lock out older competing browsers, the FTC or EU might have questions about that. If you're pushing to be number one in a massive market, you have to play by different rules (as Microsoft found out in the 90's). Google hasn't been playing nice with Microsoft for a while (see how many Google apps are in the Windows Phone store, the issue where they locked out IE Mobile from viewing Google Maps, or how they treat Windows Phone trying to interface with YouTube). In a way it's nice to see Microsoft reaping what they've sown so long ago, but in another way it's incredibly frustrating from an end user perspective to be someone who likes Microsoft software (such as Windows Phone) and also enjoy using Google services like Maps and Youtube. Google should be careful with how much they're pushing against Microsoft, especially with Microsoft's new market position versus Google. Microsoft is hardly the monopoly anymore.

davidjgraph 13y ago
This market if office software, and web enabled applications. Microsoft most certainly are the closest to a monopoly in office software, how many companies buy Word simply to open files sent to them?
- barake 13y ago
  Well hopefully zero, since Microsoft gives away free software to view Word docs (plus other apps for Excel and PPT): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4 In practice, I'm sure lots of copies are sold for the reason you stated.
angularly 13y ago
Google is doing the world a big favor with this, forcing people to upgrade to new browsers and defragmenting the web as a whole... not to mention making life a hell of alot easier for all us web developers. Microsoft can just make their browser autoupdate like everyone else is doing.

mratzloff 13y ago

For some reason this article resists drawing the obvious conclusion, which is that this is just an effort to turn Google Docs users into Chrome users.

emn13 13y ago
See also: Hangouts, which for some reason work well only in chrome, and only in chrome have an addon that integrates with your desktop.
- chrismonsanto 13y ago
  See also: personal blocklists for search, which STILL aren't available for Firefox.
cromwellian 13y ago
Supporting older browsers is an enormous drain on productivity, and it also influences design decisions for the worse sometimes by driving the design towards a lowest common denominator there the denominator is broken (e.g. terrible garbage collector in IE6/7) It's time to move the web forward. I'd say this is an effort to turn Google Docs users into IE11, Firefox, or Chrome users.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
It's not so obvious when you realize how much of CSS3 is unsupported by IE9 but supported by IE10. Or the fact that Google's policy for Google apps is to support the current major version and one back for all supported browsers. They've stated this policy for over 2 years. Now that IE11 is out, IE11 (current) and IE10 (legacy) are supported while IE9 (2 back) is dropped.

l0c0b0x 13y ago

- First, Google extends support for Chrome on XP for a few more years - Second, Google ends support for IE8/9. Sweet move Google/Chrome.

lotyrin 13y ago
Yep. Google supports modern web runtime on more of Microsoft's platforms than Microsoft themselves do. People in companies who are stuck on particular OS version, but have the freedom and motivation to adopt new productivity software can probably also download a browser. Google is making perfect sense here, the real question is why did MS screw this up so bad and integrate OS and web runtime to such a degree they can't support more of their user base?
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Yeah, Microsoft's failure to keep supporting XP users (who still make up a whopping third of the entire OS market, 12 years after that OS was released) is this decade's IE6-lock-in. Hopefully, most will move off IE8 onto Chrome, but I'm not holding my breath.
  - sounds 13y ago
    If China is any indication, XP users will end up paying not for the OS (pirate!) but for continuing support. I would laugh if some virus writers switched sides and start offering up patches for XP. They may know the core OS better than the developers still working in Redmond by now.
- code_duck 13y ago
  I've never been able to tell how much of the 'web browser is in the OS!' system was a business move to defeat Netscape and how much was an ill-conceived technical idea. Either way, 'Active Desktop' was pretty darn lousy.
- asdasf 13y ago
  >the real question is why did MS screw this up so bad and integrate OS and web runtime to such a degree they can't support more of their user base? They didn't see it as a screw up, they did it intentionally to push people into upgrading to new windows releases. They did not count on people having no interest in upgrading their computers any more, which is how most people got new windows versions.

Touche 13y ago

I love this. Very reasonable position. The last 2 versions is very reasonable in my opinion. This is common on the mobile app side, developers only supporting the last couple of major OS versions. And because this is Google they have the weight to make Microsoft think hard about their policies of abandoning their own customers.

ericd 13y ago
It's really not reasonable at all for large non tech-driven businesses... If I were running one of those, this kind of behavior would be a strong anxiety driver for me, which would make me stick with Microsoft and their extremely lax upgrade pushes + strong backward compatibility track record. The reason is that businesses rarely have time to drop everything and upgrade something core, and it's not likely to improve their business in any meaningful way. To them, Google is just being a nuisance with this.

com2kid 13y ago

Because HP never upgraded my graphics card drivers on my laptop, I cannot upgrade past IE9 on my Windows 7 machine. (For whatever reason IE10 takes a dependency upon some point release of DirectX that requires driver revisions). So, umm, gee thanks Google? Ugh.

monitron 13y ago
Why not choose a different browser?
- com2kid 13y ago
  I use a variety of browsers, but some websites work best in some browsers. I've seen sites not work in FF or IE that work great in Opera, sites that fail in IE and work fine in FF, and it is not to uncommon to find sites posted here that only work in Chrome. FF leaks memory, or at least the plugins that make FF great leak memory. (If I kill Reddit Enhancement Suite and AdBlock+ FF tends to stay alive for more than a few hours). I'm opposed to Chrome, I prefer a browser that isn't designed to track everything I do. (Although Google already tracks everything that I do, so I'm really not winning much of that battle.) On my Windows 7 machine, IE is my browser that has no plugins installed. It is really fast, light, and insanely stable. FF is my plugin laden browser, as such it tends to go down in flames with some frequency. I am annoyed with the IE team for taking a dependency upon DirectX, annoyed with DirectX for taking a dependency upon video card drivers, and annoyed with HP for not updating their drivers. (To be fair, there is a very short list of Laptops that the particular DirectX update doesn't work with, mine just so happens to be on that list!)
  - driverdan 13y ago
    Open FF in privacy mode without plugins enabled. Or disable Chrome's "tracking" mechanisms (there aren't many). Problem solved.
    - com2kid 13y ago
      > Open FF in privacy mode without plugins enabled. Then the internet is a much worse experience! I have those plugins installed for a reason; Flash, AdBlock+ and Reddit Enhancement Suite.

c23gooey 13y ago

I wonder if Google are shooting themselves in the foot a little bit here. The corporate world doesnt move that fast, many companies still use IE7 for instance. If corporate users cant use gmail etc its going to force them to things like hotmail which im sure will work fine in any version of IE7+

giovannibajo1 13y ago
outlook.com only supports IE8+. IE7 is totally unsupported by anyone, including MS. There are no patch updates, no security bugfixes. There's also zero reasons to use it, as enterprises can upgrade to IE8 and configure a GPO to force IE7 compatibility mode for Intranet site or whatever broken resources they need to access through IE7.
- yuhong 13y ago
  >IE7 is totally unsupported by anyone, including MS. There are no patch updates, no security bugfixes. This is a myth.
- icebraining 13y ago
  They had a security fix for IE6, 7 and up just last month: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-080 https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-0... The patch for IE7 is called IE7-WindowsXP-KB2879017-x86-ENU.exe
stdgy 13y ago
Google is effectively utilizing the same strategy Apple used with the iPhone. Namely, ignore the corporate market and capture normal customers. Deliver a great experience and integrate your products into their lives. If you capture enough of them you'll create a backdoor into the corporate marketplace by increasing employee demands for a modern experience. I think it's a great idea, and it's the only way I see the web moving forward at a reasonable pace.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
13y ago

DigitalSea 13y ago

The only way the web can move forward is if we stop supporting archaic browsers that can't support half the features CSS3 and HTML5 have to offer. Google are the only company game enough to make such a move, they should be praised for this. They've consistently helped push the web forward, IE10 is exciting and a decent version of Internet Explorer, I can't wait until I can build for IE10+ Websockets, HTML5 File API, FileReader API, XMLHttpRequest 2, Web Workers, IndexedDB, requestAnimationFrame, JS Typed Arrays, PageVisibility and a whole list of other awesome things that IE10+ supports. I'm drooling thinking of all of these new API's I soon will be able to use in my web applications without needing shims.

huxley 13y ago
Man, I remember thinking how good it would be when I could stop supporting IE6 ... I think it was last week.
- DigitalSea 13y ago
  IE6 opens up some painful wounds for me. It was a dark dark time for the web. Still hurts thinking back to the use of transparent PNG's and all the issues to get them to work!
  - kamjam 13y ago
    I don't think it was. IE pushed a lot of boundaries back in the day and it was up to others to innovate. Just look at how far we have come since Firefox was released. I understand that MS using it's dominant position was bad, but it's exactly what Google does too. It's business and you take every advantage you have.
    - Mahn 13y ago
      > IE pushed a lot of boundaries back in the day And then fell asleep for years. If it hadn't been for Mozilla, people would still be using IE6.

zmmmmm 13y ago

> We support the latest version of Google Chrome (which automatically updates whenever it detects that a new version of the browser is available) as well as the current and prior major release of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis This policy seems kind of broken since browser versioning went crazy. There is no longer any particular link between a "major" version of a browser and the actual technical changes under the hood that came with it. Chrome has a new "major" version what, monthly? FireFox nearly the same? MS sat on IE6 for 5 years and then iterated nearly a major version every year since, but now seems to be correlating them to new (major or minor) versions of Windows. Tying a support policy to something that is so different between browsers, and mostly a marketing device, seems pretty weird to me.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Not really. They're just saying "we have the manpower (and patience) to test on two different versions of each of these three browsers, and one of our own" rather than "we'll support however many different browser versions these vendors care to release in the past X months" - seems kinda prudent to me.
danielweber 13y ago
"Minor" versions of chrome have also completely broken significant features. There seems to be a curse where becoming a powerful browser company makes you do really bad things.

GnarfGnarf 13y ago

Kaspersky AV flags the link as "phishing URL".

csmuk 13y ago

This really doesn't make sense apart from for the sake of pushing Chrome, which is using the same bait and switch tactics that Microsoft used in the late 90's and early 00's. Don't be evil eh? If you look at the FULL chart they reference[1], there are considerably more IE8 users than any Apple device for example and there are more IE8 and IE9 users combined than IE10. IE8 users are likely on Windows XP as that's the last supported browser version on that. Bye bye XP users unless you install Chrome. IE9 users are likely on Windows Vista as that's the last supported browser version on that. Bye bye Vista users unless you install Chrome. This appears to be Google just being a dick, seeing an opportunity and forcing Chrome on people. To be honest, and I really hate saying this, Microsoft are the only damn company left that has a reasonable support lifecycle these days. Literally everyone else makes a whooshing sound. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201310-201311-bar http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201310... (stats are all bullshit on this anyway TBH). Footnote: I'm posting this from Firefox on OpenBSD before I get accused of being a shill...

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Wait, Google are being dicks because they continue to support XP, which Microsoft has abandoned, despite it still being widely used, but Microsoft is the only company with a reasonable support lifecycle? Something about that doesn't add up ...
- csmuk 13y ago
  They said on day one and in the EULA that it would be supported until 2012 (10 years). They extended that to 12 years to give people time to migrate. They've been more than reasonable. Since XP came out, I've got married, had three children, owned two houses, owned 3 cars, have gone from a simple black and white Nokia phone that makes calls to a pocket cray, I've watches wars waged between many nation, I've got 160x the bandwidth on my internet connection, I have no CRTs any more, I can just sit down anywhere and get a WiFi connection and my entire library fits in my pocket, That's a fuck of a long time. All these people really need to just stop whinging like babies and realise how long 12 years is.

dshep 13y ago

This is the most interesting part for me: "Android has a much bigger fragmentation problem than Internet Explorer. Supporting only the latest 2 Android releases (4.3 and 4.4) would mean targeting less than 3% of the Android devices." Must be accurate coming from Google.

winslow 13y ago
Here is data straight from Google about android fragmentation. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  So it’s actually closer to 2.3%. That’s sad.
cecilpl 13y ago
To be fair, the Nexus 5 is the only device that is currently running 4.4, and it's only been available for the last week (I'm still waiting for mine to arrive).
- zurn 13y ago
  The code is out there, they just haven't pushed it to consumers yet. http://www.androidauthority.com/android-4-4-kitkat-nexus-4-nexus-7-download-unofficially-313352/ http://www.androidauthority.com/android-4-4-kitkat-nexus-4-n...
camus2 13y ago
You can easily support old Android versions with compatibility libraries, and get most of the features of the latest os. IE6 will never support ES5 or CSS3. A 2.1 Android device can support fragments and action bars via libraries. Comparing the two is just dishonest. Furthermore Android doesnt run on web standards like HTML or CSS. If you want to compare things then compare the fact that Microsoft dont allow XP users to upgrade IE to the latest version , whereas Google provides compatibility libraries for old devices to use the latest APIs.

ffrryuu 13y ago

Good news for everyone.

Aldo_MX 13y ago

That was fast... but I'm really glad as a developer, the less old versions to support the better.

outside1234 13y ago

I bet there were cheers in the Office 365 team when they heard this - that is an enterprise non-starter.

quaffapint 13y ago

My mega-size company is still in the process of moving from XP to Windows 7. So, our 'new' browser is IE9.

driverdan 13y ago
Why isn't it IE10?
mukundmr 13y ago
One of the clients I work for is still stuck on IE9 on Windows 7 as well. I really fail to understand the IT department.

so898 13y ago

So next time Google will drop Windows or Mac OSX to introduce their brand new OS system? I hope it will not be the Chrome OS or Android.

superuser2 13y ago
Modern IE is still supported. This doesn't make sense.
- zobzu 13y ago
  actually while the comment author is pushing right now his scenario could very well happen in the medium/long term future..

andyl 13y ago

Why the heck doesn't MS auto-update its browsers? Chrome and FF have been doing it for years.

acjohnson55 13y ago

Google's not abandoning these people. Microsoft abandoned them long ago. When I hear from QA that something isn't working on IE8, it ruins my entire day. Even IE10 is dreadful to work with. Good riddance!

hbharadwaj 13y ago

There are reasons for MS not auto updating IE and leaving update settings to system admins. SAP in my company works only for IE9. One cannot simply drop whatever it is and start working on bug fixes for IE10/11, Firefox and Chrome, irrespective of whose fault it is. Google is being Google in this matter.

zobzu 13y ago

that stats counter graph looks pretty flawed

laichzeit0 13y ago

As someone who has psychological scars from having to create and maintain IE6 compatible webapps I can't help but have absolutely no sympathy for the web experience of any IE user. Google could very well go "We don't support IE. If it happens to render or work at all on your browser, count yourself lucky." and I wouldn't care a damn.

JEVLON 13y ago

Even though Chrome automatically updates on people's personal computers, bureaucracies like my university still use a version that is more than a year old (could be over 2 yrs). I hope Google finds a way to force such luddite organisations to update regularly.

xacaxulu 13y ago

Forced extinction of a horrible browser. Sounds alright to me.

beauzero 13y ago

This could actually lead to more Windows 8/8.1 and PC sales. Don't underestimate the stupidity of the public.