IE6 Usage Drops Around the World, Goes Below 1% in the US

Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) continues to lose significant market share all around the world, a reason to rejoice for Microsoft, which is eager to see it gone for good.

The web browser is old and unreliable and Microsoft has long been promoting newer flavors of the application to determine users to leave it behind.

Web developers who want to make their sites compatible with the 10 year-old browser have to work a lot to make that happen. Basically, IE6’s death is a win for everybody, Microsoft says.

Apparently, users have indeed started to respond to Microsoft’s call for upgrading the browsers on their computers, and the latest data collected by Net Applications shows that IE6 usage is down even more.

One reason for Microsoft to rejoice is that less than 1 percent of Internet Explorer users in the US have the older browser installed at the moment.

Last March, Microsoft put in place an IE6 Countdown site to accelerate the process of getting rid of the browser, and the results were visible, Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer Marketing, said.

The website was aimed at watching the usage of IE6 shrinking below the 1 percent mark, so that websites could drop support for the browser.

“Less than a year later, I’m thrilled to say that the United States has joined the ranks of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway in dropping below 1% usage of IE6,” he says.

“In addition, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, Portugal and the Philippines are also entering the Champions’ Circle. We hope this means more developers and IT Pros can consider IE6 a “low-priority” at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser.”

The IE6 Countdown site has seen over 2.75 million visitors and 5.6 million page views since launch, which shows interest from users, Capriotti notes.

You can have a look at the said website here. If Internet Explorer 6 is still present on you computer, you can choose to download Internet Explorer 8 or Internet Explorer 9 to replace it today. A wide collection of other browsers is available on Softpedia as well.