On an official Google Enterprise Blog post, published January 29, 2010, Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Senior Product Manager, announced the company will cease to support Microsoft’s nine-year old Internet Explorer 6 browser in the delivery of Google web-based services beginning March 1, 2010. Specifically, certain embedded features of Google Docs will no longer function as designed.
According to the blog, browsers to continue being officially supported by Google sites and cloud-based applications include Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+, and Apple Safari 3.0+. Despite speculation by many that the discontinuance of support may be a retaliatory measure against Microsoft for Internet Explorer 6.0′s alleged use as the launching platform for successful Google Gmail intrusions revealed in January 2010, no specific mention of this was written by Sheth.
According to the latest web documentation available, Microsoft plans to continue support for the browser, through 2014. In the only reference to the actual reason behind the discontinuance, Sheth wrote, “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. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites.”
In this case, as mentioned above, Microsoft has yet to stop supporting the browser. This leaves one to wonder if the premature discontinuance truly does have an undertone of retaliation from one computer giant to another? The only thing certain is that neither side is likely to admit anything.
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