BBC News reports: Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in a “sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack on the search engine. The firm said from 1 March some of its services, such as Google Docs, would not work “properly” with the browser. It recommended individuals and firms upgrade “as soon as possible”.

Included below is an e-mail that was forwarded to us as part of this news submission by user chrisfriberg.

Dear Google Apps admin,â€‹ In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar. Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above. Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change. In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses. Thank you for your continued support! Sincerely, The Google Apps team

I think it was safe to say that the attack on Google, woke Google up to the threat of IE on their own systems and they must have done (or are in the process of) an internal review of it’s use. I had not expected them to react publicly so quickly though.

I think this is a good thing. Increasing internal complaints from corporate desktop users should increase the pressure on backwards and incompetent companies to update.

Of course, they’ll want users to upgrade to a browser like Chrome, and it’ll be interesting to see come March and onwards if browser trends see a noticeable uptick, just like Mozilla saw when the German and French governments recommended to users to not use IE6.

Of course, moving users on is good for their security, but will this move developers on too? That remains to be seen.