Google does its part to wean people off Internet Explorer 6

IE 6 is dangerous. You know it. I’ve been warning you about it since November 2006. Even Microsoft admits it. Now Google’s doing something about it.

In the wake of the Chinese attack on Google, the Googlies are starting to pull back support for Internet Explorer 6, beginning on March 1.

Quoth the Beeb:

Google has now said it is going to phase out support for the browser “starting with Google Docs and Google Sites”.

Rajen Sheth, Google Senior Product Manager puts it this way:

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Microsoft 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 on March 1st. So while you’ll still be able to access these Google applications, newer features may not be available and some features may even stop working.

Thanks to HFP for the heads-up!

Microsoft: 60,000,000 Windows 7 licenses sold last year

… and $19,000,000,000 in revenue for the last three months of 2009.

Net income for the quarter was $6,600,000,000, up 60% over last year.

Microsoft’s financial details this quarter make my head spin. It’s hard counting all of those zeroes.

Good iPad review

I haven’t seen the iPad yet, but it looks like a sweet little machine.

Excellent review at AnandTech.

MS-DEFCON 2: Lots of little updates trickling in

For a couple of years, now, Microsoft has been dribbling out little updates for Vista on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Starting this month, the little dribble now includes Windows 7 as well.

If you see a notification for new updates that you haven’t seen before, it’s just the little guys knocking at your door. Ars Technica has details.

There’s nothing in the dribble that’s of any interest to most of you. Well, OK, if you fit the following description:

your Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer has an NVIDIA USB Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) chipset, at least 4GB of RAM, and while performing general I/O operations on an external USB device, such as copying data from the computer, either your computer stops responding or the copy operation stops abruptly.

For everybody else, it’s a yawner. We’re still at MS-DEFCON 2: Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don’t do it.

Apple posts $3,380,000,000 in profits

OK. I’m impressed.

iPod sales are lackluster, but everything else Apple makes has turned to gold. Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but consider:

Mac sales up 33% in 2009 vs 2008
iPhone sales up 100% in 2009 vs 2008

Revenue is way up. Profits are way up. An accounting change goosed the results more than a little bit.

You’ll be hearing more about it over all the major news outlets shortly.

Google Chrome 4.0 Released to “Stable” Channel

Google has just released its Chrome 4.0 browser to the stable channel. Two major features added to the 4.0 version: bookmark sync and extensions (aka. addons similar to Firefox).

Read more about the latest Google Chrome stable release here.

Download the latest stable release of Google Chrome here.

Details emerge about ChromeOS

I’m beginning to warm up to ChromeOS.

John Stokes at Ars Technica has an interview with Matthew Papakipos, the ChromeOS engineering director. They cover a lot of ground.

Clearly, the folks at Google know what they’re doing. Maybe this year we’ll see something substantial come of it.

Larry and Sergey to sell $5,500,000,000 in stock over next five years

Yep, that’s 5.5 BILLION smackers.

I wondered why Google stock went down on Friday.

Brian Womack at Business Week reports:

Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have adopted five-year trading plans to sell about 5 million shares each, reducing their combined ownership of stock outstanding to 15 percent from 18 percent… Based on today’s closing stock price, each would get about $2.75 billion from selling the shares.

Cool, eh? You could buy a whole lotta Egg McMuffins with that stack.

To look at it another way, they’re cashing out stock worth about 50% more than the Gross National Product of Haiti.