With the public “preview” of Google Wave scheduled next week, Google has dropped a bombshell into the browser wars: the big-buzz communication tool isn’t going to be organically compatible with Internet Explorer.
In its latest Google Wave update (Tuesday, Sept. 22), the web behemoth said that after pouring significant staff resources into trying to accommodate Internet Explorer, enough is enough. Spending more time trying to make the much-awaited Wave compatible with IE’s slower and aging technology is sapping energy better spent on improving the product.
Instead, IE users — who represent a super-majority of internet users — will get the message shown in the screen above when they try to access Google Wave, telling them they must either install the Google Chrome Frame plugin or use a compatible browser. Surprisingly Google Wave doesn’t organically support even the latest version of Internet Explorer.
But web developers everywhere are sure to cheer this bold move. Internet Explorer 6, which is still used by a quarter of all internet users (barely edged out by the total number of Firefox users), was released in late 2001, just before Windows XP. Many IE6 users are trapped by corporate IT department policies.
Because of the preponderance of IE6 market share, web developers for years have had to expend a great amount of resources — by some measures as much as 50 percent extra — to create hacks and bandages to make sure the old browser will work. In many cases, web technology development has been crippled, brought to a slow crawl.
Some are calling Google’s move a ploy to boost its own browser’s market share. Which it might well be. But there is also a movement across the web to leave IE6 behind … Digg, YouTube and others are already limiting functionality (or planning to), and there are organized efforts, such as the “IE6 No More” coalition, to take the old browser down.
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