The iE6 Countdown page shows that Microsoft still has a long way to go to retire IE6

Jan 6, 2014 19:56 GMT  ·  By

Internet Explorer 6 continues to be a surprisingly popular browser these days, even though it’s pretty obvious that it’s no longer capable of coping with today’s technologies and compete with newer browsers on the market.

And still, 4.9 percent of the desktop users across the world are still running Internet Explorer 6 right now, which makes Microsoft mission to kill the browser even more difficult than it already was.

The IE6 Countdown page, which was set up by Microsoft to allow users keep an eye on the (hopefully decreasing) market share of Internet Explorer 6 shows that the 12-year-old browser is indeed losing ground, but clearly not as fast as Redmond hoped to.

“Over 10 years ago, a browser was born. Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we're in 2013, in an era of modern web standards, it's time to say goodbye,” Microsoft said in a statement released last year.

Of course, the Redmond-based software giant hopes that all users would actually stick to Internet Explorer when moving to a modern browser, pointing to Internet Explorer 11 as the most secure and fastest version of its in-house browser ever released.

IE11 is the default Windows 8.1 browser and comes in two different flavors, one for the Modern environment and another one for the desktop. The latter is also offered as an optional download to Windows 7 users in both 32- and 64-bit versions.

Internet Explorer 11 is quickly gaining ground, as statistics provided by market researcher Net Applications for the month of December 2013 show that this browser version is running on 10.42 percent of computers worldwide. If the same uptake rate is maintained, IE11 has big chances to become the world’s number one browser sometime this year, especially because more users are transitioning to Windows 8.1.