Software creators go to great lengths to convince consumers to adopt their wares over those of competitors. The web browser market sees fierce competition between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome and the Open Source Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft sings tall praises of its Internet Explorer, the latest incarnation of which is version 9.
However, in an interest quirk of Internet history, a good percentage of the world’s Web surfers continue to use an outdated, ten year old version of Microsoft’s Web Browser. Internet Explorer 6 continues to form the mainstay of many organisations’ Internet usage. While consumers have been quick to adopt leaner, faster browsers that support modern standards such as HTML 5 and CSS3, large organisations in the private and public sectors continue to lag behind.
Technological xenophobia, red tape and corporate aversion to change may be some of the factors inhibiting the adoption of newer Web browsers, to the effect that more than a tenth of the World’s web surfers continue to use Internet Explorer 6 to this day. IE 6 was the first browser to successfully compete with Netscape Communicator 4.0, in time effectively putting Netscape out of the browser business. Now Microsoft wants the world to stop using Internet explorer 6 and switch instead to the latest version of its dominant web browser.
Microsoft is taking the prospect of change very seriously. It has actually created a website dedicated to the cause of Internet Explorer updation, a link to which was broadcast today on its official Twitter account. IE6 countdown features geographical information on IE6 use across the world, along with calls to action urging web developers to display banners promoting IE6 updates to Internet Explorer 9.
