Microsoft celebrates the death of IE6 while Chrome takes a back seat

All good things must come to an end and the final curtain call for Internet Explorer version 6 has come.  The official Windows blog announced the demise. According to Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer Marketing, latest data from Net Applications showed IE6 usage in the United States has now officially dropped below 1%. as it revealed that the program was used by less than 1% of US internet surfers.

Celebrations

The software giant held a light-hearted celebration of this demise  and Windows staff celebrated by baking  a cake and cracking open the champagne. Capriotti made a statement asking developers to stop wasting time on the 'outdated' browser which was released more than a decade ago. While people look on in awe and comment on why a company is celebrating the demise of a product, Windows staff are keen for internet users to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer - IE9.

Capriotti is quoted as saying ''So as we kick off 2012, we call on the rest of the world – make it your new year’s resolution to end IE6 and move to a modern browser like IE8 or IE9,"

However, in the UK, the usage of IE6 is averaging at around 1.4% in comparison to China where usage is still high at around 25%.

Many industry experts are not surprised at the fact Microsoft are glad to see the back of a product they developed and come to realise was a 'turkey'. Constantly plagued by security issues and vulnerabilities of the browser probably contributed to the final demise of the product.

Chrome Climbdown

Meanwhile Google, Microsoft's biggest rival were pushed into an embarrassing position as they had to pull back on the promotion of their own browser - Chrome. Google had to downgrade Google Chrome in search engine listings when it became apparent that a marketing campaign was in place which was paying bloggers to promote a video about the product. To save further embarrassment the search Giant has now distanced itself from the marketing campaign and have also pushed the blame on to the marketing company responsible - Essence Digital.

Just how did all of this come to light? Aaron Wall author of the SEO Book blog wrote that he was searching and found the following post "This post is sponsored by Google" threw up more than 400 pages written as part of a marketing campaign. As soon as this revelation came to light it wasn't long before industry experts voiced their opinions.  Danny Sullivan a search expert couldn't believe the revelation an went to his search engine blog to voice his anger - "Google, the company that has been fighting against paid links and 'thin' content seems to be behind a campaign that's generating both on behalf of its Chrome browser. File this under 'what were they thinking?'"

It wasn't long before Google approached the BBC to defend themselves and vehemently denied ever commissioning Essence Digital to approach bloggers and place sponsored links. Essence Digital also commented on the revelation and issued a statement - "Google never approved a sponsored-post campaign. They only agreed to buy online video ads. Google have consistently avoided paid postings to promote their products, because in their view these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users.

"We apologise to Google who clearly didn't authorise this."

Mobile battleground

Despite the backlash Google are facing at the moment, industry watchers are still confident that Chrome could overtake IE as the leading browser in 2012 pushing Mozilla Firefox out of contention. The data firm StatCounter published results showing Google Chrome increasing its market share from 15.6% in January 2011  to 27% at year end.  While Google increased its market share, Microsoft were not as fortunate. their market share dropped from 46% to 38.6% while Firefox also had a fall from 30.6% at the beginning of 2011 to 25.7% by December 2011.

Richard Edwards a principal analyst at research firm Ovum has a very cautious view and has commented that if Microsoft continue to dominate the market with Windows, then IE9 will also remain the number one browser. He also added that browser wars are no longer PC based and a mobile browser war is on the cards. He added Microsoft have to work hard to maintain the biggest share for mobile browsers as it is still somewhat lacking behind Android and iOS device browsers.