Google does its part to wean people off Internet Explorer 6

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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. I
[See the full post at: Google does its part to wean people off Internet Explorer 6]

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When you say “Even Microsoft admits it”, I think it’s important to note that MS has, in the past, briefly steered people away from IE while there were unpatched major known security flaws, BUT…

In this most recent round, MS’s motive isn’t so high-minded. Their support of the move away from IE6 is part of a FUD campaign steering you toward buying Win7.

While the rest of the world is saying “upgrade IE from v6 to v7 or v8”, MS’s sales department is this month saying “the security flaw exists in the combination of IE6 and WinXP, so either upgrade IE or buy Win7 or do BOTH!”

What MS isn’t being straighforward about is, WHY the flaw “exists in the combination of IE6 and WinXP”. *Ahem*. This is where we get to giggle, or fire a round of rubberbands at their officeworkers. Their point is that Vista and Win7 don’t ship IE6 and old versions of WinXP do, so upgrading your O/S guarantees that you’re using a later version of IE.

This is FUD disinformation (fear, uncertainty and doubt) being used to sell Windows. It’s the equivalent of telling someone that to prevent shark bites, they must not only avoid swimming in the ocean; they must also buy a sharkproof chainmail suit and a freshwater swimming pool.

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It’s worth mentioning that I’m a big fan of Woody’s solution to IE security flaws: Keep IE patched and up-to-date, AND don’t use it. Instead, use another browser (like Firefox, Safari, Seamonkey, or Opera) instead.

The point of this seeming double-protection is that Woody understands that IE is used in the background to support quite a few other programs. Por ejemplo, Outlook (or Outlook Express?) use IE to interpret the HTML in emails. In a sense, your MS email program is a great big IE browser plug-in, while you’re reading emails written in HTML (as perhaps half of all emails are).

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Read this Betanews.com article titled “Google: Phase-out of IE6 support will remain limited to Google Apps”
http://www.betanews.com/article/Google-Phaseout-of-IE6-support-will-remain-limited-to-Google-Apps/1265053594

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