Companies don't typically cheer the demise of their products, but in an effort to get Internet Explorer users to upgrade to more current versions of the browser, Microsoft has launched a death watch of sorts for IE6.
The software giant on Friday unveiled ie6countdown.com, a site that will keep tabs on the dwindling use of the now decade-old IE6. "It's time to say goodbye," reads a message on the site.
"Now that it's 2011, IE6 is officially a ten-year old browser. According to Net Applications, IE6 still has 12 percent share worldwide. Our goal is to get this share under 1 percent worldwide," Roger Capriotti, director of IE product marketing, wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft selected 1 percent because that number "will allow more sites and IT pros worldwide to make IE6 a low-priority browser – meaning you don't have to invest as much time in updates or fixes," Capriotti said.
The IE6 countdown site includes IE6 usage share data on a country-by-country basis, provided by Net Applications. At this point, the browser is most popular in China, at 34.5 percent. In the U.S. it's at 2.9 percent.
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