The company says most people have moved on beyond obsolete browsers

Jun 13, 2013 18:56 GMT  ·  By

Google has announced that it's retiring Chrome Frame, the Internet Explorer plugin which inserts Chrome's engine into IE.

The tool was designed for environments where installing Chrome, or updating to a modern browser, wasn't a possibility and for people who had to use Internet Explorer for whatever reason.

The idea was that you could run Internet Explorer and all the poorly thought out enterprise tools (written in Java and "optimized" for IE6) that you needed while still being able to browse the rest of the web in a fast and secure browser.

Chrome Frame has been around for a few years now, but Google has decided its days are over.

"We created Chrome Frame — a secure plug-in that brings a modern engine to old versions of Internet Explorer — to allow developers to bring better experiences to more users, even those who were unable to move to a more capable browser," Google explained.

The reason why it's retiring Chrome Frame is actually encouraging; Google says that the environment has changed since 2009 when the tool was introduced.

Fewer and fewer people and companies are using obsolete browsers, implying that even Internet Explorer is good enough these days.

"Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream," Google said.

So it has decided to stop development and support for the Chrome Frame in January 2014. The tool will get updates until the end of the year, but that's it. Admins and developers relying on the tool are strongly encouraged to switch to a modern browser, even if it's just IE10. Google would love for you to switch to Chrome, of course.

Chrome Frame's debut video: