An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

November 6, 2013

Google Drops Support for IE9

The Google Apps blog announced that Google will drop support for Internet Explorer 9, now that Internet Explorer 11 is available. "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. Each time a new version of one of these browsers is released, we begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version."

This policy is great for Chrome and Firefox, which automatically update to the latest version of the browser. This way, most users run the latest version of Chrome and Firefox, they get the latest features and security updates. The policy is not useful for Internet Explorer, which doesn't update automatically and has limited OS support. Starting from 2011, Microsoft updated Internet Explorer every year and each new release added support for more web technologies and made the browser faster. IE9 was released in 2011, IE10 was released in 2012 with Windows 8 and IE11 was released last month with Windows 8.1.

IE11 is only officially available for Windows 8.1. There's a release preview for Windows 7, but that's mostly for developers. Windows 7 and Windows XP are still the most popular Windows versions, so IE11's market share is pretty low.

According to StatCounter, IE10 is the most popular IE version (12.42%), followed by IE8 (9.45%) and IE9 (5.88%). They're low percentages, but this means that Google's apps only support one of the top 3 IE versions and less than half of the IE users will be able to use Google's services without issues.


"Google's test plans have been adjusted to now stop all testing and engineering work related to Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), as Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) was released on 17 October 2013. End users who access Gmail and other Google Apps services from an unsupported browser will be notified within the next few weeks through an in-product notification message or an interstitial pages with information about modern browsers and how to upgrade to them."

Supporting old browsers is a lot of work. Instead of spending time testing sites in old browsers and fixing bugs, you could add new features. Still, Google's policy seems to target IE's fragmentation and force users to switch to other browsers that are updated more frequently (Chrome and Firefox).

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. The most popular Android release is always 3 or 4 versions behind.

9 comments:

  1. Thank a lot for this post that was very interesting. Keep posting like those amazing posts, this is really awesome :) Internet Explorer Help Number Australia

    ReplyDelete
  2. Need Help? call on our Gmail Support Contact Nz and Gmail Support Contact Number Nz get instant support & help. There is a Gmail mobile App which provides you the access of Gmail on your mobile.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your blog was really nice and meaning-full for us Gmail is a standard way to share information from the email. Google email is the most part utilized electronic specialized strategies.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

  5. I like your information.
    We provide tech support information and give the better solutions to customers.
    It just for you and your product safety.Kindly visi
    Macfee product key

    ReplyDelete
  6. roku activate provides the simplest way to stream entertainment to your TV. On your terms. Visit roku.com/link for Roku code linking to your Account.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.