Advertising closure - Internet Explorer 6

In this commercial World, advertisement and media are the key.  Organizations spend lakhs and crores to have their products advertised so as to reach people and increase their sales. In such a competitive world,  can you believe that somebody is advertising and spending money informing others of the close down.

It is strange but true.  It is the curious case of Internet Explorer 6.  This browser was born a decade ago and in an ear of constant change, it is time to say good bye.  They have a dedicated website for watching IE6 usage and it is stated that its usage has dropped to less than 1% worldwide, they are promoting stoppage of usage of this browser.  

The world of computers does not need any introduction and for browsing the contents, there are many browsers are available.  The most popular of them have been : Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and more.

IE is quite popular amongst nerds – it is the Windows Internet Explorer of the Microsoft – graphical web browser which was included as a part Microsoft Windows operating systems starting from 1995.  It was first released as a part of the add-on package for Windows 95.  later versions were made available as free downloads, in service packs and patches.  IE has been quite popular and in the start of this century was at its peak, largely due to the popularity of IE 5 & IE 6.  Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. It was established in 1975  

As it happens with all, the usage or the % of users started declining in the face of tough competition from rivals.  Obviously Microsoft has spent millions on creating and making it popular.   Though operating a computer is literally child’s play – there were days when people were afraid of using it and in many Offices accessing or going near it was the prerogative of the elite group.

They say that ‘everything at the click of a mouse button’ – it is so amazing and simple.  It would indeed be a great surprise to many modern day youngsters to know that there were crude interfaces including punch cards for data entry.  Then there were only text terminals.  The ubiquitous mouse was a great invention but could not gain ground immediately due to lack of good interfaces.  Then came the GUI – Graphical user interface and now there are humans who cannot live without mice.  

Microsoft has been adding features and technologies from time to time.  The browsers have been constantly subject to changes  in tune with the expectations and wants of users.  There have been good marketing techniques including prevention of competitors in many ways.  Microsoft’s latest release is  Internet Explorer 9, which is available as a free update for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

IE 6 was released on August 27, 2001, shortly after the completion of Windows XP and was the default browser shipped with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and was also made available for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, and Windows 2000.

Microsoft wants the users to move away to upgraded / newer versions stating that there are many benefits of improved speed, tabbed browsing and better privacy settings.  Their specially set up site on this is :   http://ie6countdown.com/

Regards – S. Sampathkumar.