Microsoft Australia has launched an online campaign to try to persuade people to stop using Internet Explorer 6. The campaign likens the browser to a carton of milk: you wouldn't drink nine-year old milk, so why would you use a browser of a similar vintage?

The site then goes on to list various facts and figures about how online crime affects Australians, and describes the ways in which Internet Explorer 8 protects against phishing and security flaws.

Though the comparison is more than a little absurd (and the idea of drinking nine-year old milk wholly revolting), Internet Explorer 6 is without a doubt thoroughly obsolete. Its support for Web standards, though reasonably good back in 2001, is nowadays laughable. The world has moved forward. Internet Explorer 6 has not.

It's for this reason that websites are, slowly but surely, starting to cut support for the decrepit browser. Google no longer supports Internet Explorer 6 on YouTube and Google Docs, and is due to phase out support in Gmail and Google Calendar by the year end.

Nor is this the first time Microsoft has told users that they would be better off upgrading; in the wake of the Google hacks late last year, the company recommended upgrading. Earlier in the year, Redmond staged a mock funeral for Internet Explorer 6.

But people continue to use the ancient browser, with corporations apparently the biggest culprit.

Fundamentally, the major corporate reason is inertia. Some companies are afflicted with Web applications that genuinely require Internet Explorer 6 and fail to work in anything newer or better. But for many the issue is likely to simply be that they don't want to upgrade because upgrading means testing that their applications work, fixing any problems that might arise, and then rolling out upgrades.

Local inertia, global consequences

That inertia would be fine, except for the fact that their decision to stick with Internet Explorer 6 has consequences that spread beyond the boundaries of their organization. The Web development community is left with the unenviable task of supporting a browser with support for Web standards that lags far behind Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or even Internet Explorer 8. This in turn makes Web development more complex, time-consuming, and limited. Features that are supported in all the new browsers can't readily be used because of the sizable minority using Internet Explorer 6.

The Internet community as a whole also suffers, because the old browser is more susceptible to exploitation, both through automated attacks that install botnet software to send spam and spread viruses, and to social engineering attacks that seek to deprive people of their hard-earned cash. Modern browsers include phishing protection, and two browsers in particular (Internet Explorer 8 and Chrome) contain features that greatly reduce the impact of security flaws.

So Microsoft certainly has a good reason to encourage users to upgrade their browsers. But the campaign doesn't really ring true, because one of the biggest impediments to wholesale abandonment of Internet Explorer 6 is Microsoft itself. The company continues to support Internet Explorer 6. It will do so until April 2014, meaning the browser will still see another four years of security updates.

And if the browser works, which it sorta kinda does (especially for all the custom and business applications that corporations use), and if it's supported, which it most certainly is, it's no wonder that conservative businesses refuse to budge. Getting security fixes every Patch Tuesday and not having to upgrade are far more important to this demographic than some pie-in-the-sky Web standards.

Ending Redmond's lifeline

If Redmond were serious about getting users to upgrade, it would kill support for Internet Explorer 6 now. Not in four years, but in the next few months. Every other browser developer recognizes the need for regular updates to its browser, and with regular updates comes regular obsolescence. Take Firefox, for example. Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008. Its support ended on March 30, 2010.

Firefox is a major browser, Internet Explorer's largest competitor, and its support lifecycle is just two years. Needless to say, Firefox users haven't stuck with version 3.0. When Firefox 3.5 was released, Firefox 3.0 had a market share of around 27 percent. Six months later, it had dropped to less than seven percent, with 75 percent of Firefox users switching to version 3.5 or 3.6. The switch to Firefox 3.6 seems to be even swifter; after four months, two thirds of Firefox users have already switched. Only one in ten Firefox users are using the three-year-old 3.0.

Thanks to Chrome's automatic, transparent updating, its users migrate even faster. It took just two months for 90 percent of Chrome users to switch from 2.0 to 3.0, and just one month for 90 percent of users to switch from 3.0 to Chrome 4.0. The combination of effective automatic updating, in conjunction with downplaying the software's version number—each transition is essentially seamless from an end-user perspective—means that Chrome cuts over to new versions quickly and effectively.

Compare and contrast with Internet Explorer. No one version commands a majority of the install base. Internet Explorer 8 took ten months to attain a 20 percent overall market share (compared to Firefox 3.5 taking six months to achieve the same, and Firefox 3.6 taking just four months). It took eight months for Internet Explorer 8 to become more widespread than Internet Explorer 6. In contrast, Firefox 3.6 and Chrome 4.0 beat 3.0 and 2.0 (respectively) within their first month. (All usage figures have been taken from here.)

Just over 25 percent of surfers are using Microsoft's new browser Data source: NetApplications

Transitions between Internet Explorer versions are glacial, and no users of other browsers hang on to obsolescent versions for so long. Microsoft is a key contributor to this problem, because it refuses to take positive steps to make users switch. Internet Explorer won't automatically update in the way that Chrome will, nor even clearly inform users that it's out of date in the way that Firefox does (Firefox may even include background updating in version 4, which could give it Chrome-level transitions). And all those conservative corporate customers won't bother to update their browsers when the current version still receives patches and support.

A Web browser is not Office

If Microsoft were serious about getting users to upgrade, it would take the obvious step of killing support for Internet Explorer 6. Make Internet Explorer 8 mandatory for future security updates and support. And, in March 2012, it would do the same to Internet Explorer 8; kill it, and make Internet Explorer 9 compulsory.

But the software giant says that it's not its place to force users to upgrade. It is 100 percent committed to the concept of stable, long-lived, versioned Web browser platforms.

This strategy makes no sense in the fast-changing world of the Web. The way we use the Internet today is very different from how it was in 2001. 2001 had no Facebook or Twitter or Web 2.0. Nobody was talking about HTML5 video, or complex Web applications that offered both rich functionality and standards compliance. But they are today. New Web technologies empower both users and developers alike but only when developers can actually use them. Internet Explorer 6's continued existence is a substantial impediment.

Microsoft is trying to treat its Web browser as if it were like Office. But it's not like Office. Office has transition costs that discourage regular updates, because Office is used to produce documents that may be incompatible with older versions. A new Office version every year would mean a new, not-entirely-compatible file format every year; nobody wants that.

But Web browsers aren't used to produce content; they're used to view it. New Web browsers do the job better than old ones. They accept a broader set of standards, they implement a wider set of features. They're generally more stable, more secure, and faster, too.

Far from causing a proliferation of subtly incompatible document formats, rapid browser progress allows simplification of development. It allows developers to target Web standards, rather than distinct browser versions. A given feature might not be supported by every browser right now, but in a world of regular browser releases, it will be supported everywhere pretty soon.

A skin-deep commitment to standards

Microsoft itself has been heavily advocating this "target standards, and use the same code in every browser" mantra in its promotion of Internet Explorer 9. The "same markup" is one of Internet Explorer 9's key features: developers should not have to target Redmond's software specifically. Just target the relevant standards instead, and you'll get something that works in Internet Explorer and Firefox and Chrome.

The company continues to undermine this stance, however, with its support policies. For the "same markup" to be viable, people need to be using browsers that all offer more or less the same features. If they don't, developers have no choice but to aim not only at specific browsers, but at specific versions of those browsers. And while Microsoft may be shouting out "use the same markup," its actions nonetheless say "target specific versions."

The best way to prevent version-targeting is to release regularly and ensure rapid transitions. It's technically possible to version-target Chrome. But it would be insane; within a month of a new version coming out virtually every Chrome user will be using a different version than you targeted. That policy does far more to ensure the "same markup" than any number of posts on the Internet Explorer blog will.

I'm sure this must be frustrating to plenty of those within Microsoft, too. Internet Explorer 9 is shaping up to be an excellent Web browser. But that's not going to count for much if, a year after its release, a majority of Internet Explorer users are still using versions 6, 7, and 8.

The company's policy is doing its own developers a huge disservice, and I imagine it's their awareness of this that led to the funeral stunt in the first place. They know that Internet Explorer 6 should be dead and buried, even if the decision-makers don't.

Mixed messages

Perhaps most frustrating of all is Redmond's claims that it has to let users choose to upgrade, and that they can't be forced. Clearly, other browser developers can, and do, force upgrades. But more to the point, so does Microsoft itself. Service Pack 2 for Windows XP was a major update to the platform, and it made a number of small, but compatibility-breaking changes to the Windows platform.

Did Microsoft tell its users "It's OK, you can ignore Service Pack 2 and we'll continue to support you, all for the sake of a stable, consistent platform?" No. It made Service Pack 2 mandatory. Not overnight, but not nine years later, either. In July, Service Pack 3 will become mandatory. Corporate customers wanting patches and continued support for Windows XP will have no choice but to install Service Pack 3. Even if it results in incompatibilities and requires them to fix stuff, they have no other option.

Instead of making joke sites about spoiled milk and having mock funerals, Microsoft should bite the bullet and acknowledge that a Web browser is not the same kind of software as a productivity suite, and stop treating it accordingly. The current situation—on the one hand supporting the product and justifying its continued usage, but on the other hand publicly denigrating it—shouldn't be allowed to continue.

Yes, there will be some backlash from the corporate customers. But in all honesty, what choice do they have? Even if Microsoft cut browser support to, say, four years (which would give Internet Explorer 7 another five months to live), it would be providing more support to corporate customers than any alternative browser could provide. There's not going to be some wholesale abandonment of Explorer in favor of a mythical long-life browser, because even a scaled back Internet Explorer life span is the best thing going in this regard.

Frankly, killing Internet Explorer 6 is something Microsoft should have done long ago, and the company's failure to do so has undoubtedly set back the development and growth of the Web. But there's no use crying over spilled milk, even if it is nine years old. It may be too late to really solve the Internet Explorer 6 mess, but there's no reason that the future has to play out the same way.