Google has clearly had enough with Internet Explorer 6.
As of March 1, Google will no longer support IE6 on its Google Docs and Google Sites services, it announced Friday. IE users will have to upgrade to at least version 7 if they want to use those products, as "many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers," the company said in a blog post.
A flaw in IE6 was exploited in the recent cyberattacks against Google and other U.S. companies, and Microsoft scrambled to patch the flawin a rare out-of-cycle patch release earlier this month. Use of the browser--considered much weaker than more recent versions of IE within the security community--has been dropping with the release of Internet Explorer 8 but it is still being used by 13.5 percent of Web surfers, according to statistics from StatCounter.
Google set the baseline for other browsers at Firefox 3.0 or higher, Chrome 4.0 or higher, and Safari 3.0 or higher. "...you may find that from March 1, key functionality within these products--as well as new Docs and Sites features--won't work properly in older browsers," Google said.