Google have announced that from August 1st they are phasing out support for ‘old’ internet browsers.
The move is step to stop the usage of older browsers which are often insecure and unable to support the latest web technologies. Those using browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 3.5 (along with their older predecessors) will begin to lose some functionality when using the Google ‘Docs’ ‘Calendar’ and ‘Talk’ apps and sites, before losing them altogether.
Statistics have reported that an estimated 17% of users will have to change browsers when the changes begin to happen. Google have said the reason behind this move is their engineers wanting to use the latest web technologies, and thus needing people to use browsers with support for HTMl5.
This is not the first time big companies have made moves to get users off of older browsers, in mid-may Mozilla underwent a big campaign to get the 12million or so users of their Firefox 3.5 browser to upgrade – which managed to cut numbers down to around 1million. Microsoft’s campaign to get people away from IE6 is one of the longest running campaigns, however still many companies prefer to stick with the old, unsafe browser due to familiarity with it, meanwhile in the Far East, 34% of Chinese users are still on IE6, along with 22.3% of South Koreans and 11.6% of Vietnamese – making up a large part of the estimated 11% worlwide market share IE6 still has.
For more information on browser compatibility with your website, or for getting your business online, please call the friendly Web Development team on 01623 650333.
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