![]() ![]() One of them, the ' Suggested sites' function, recommends new websites you may not know about, based on your browsing history. It comes in really handy for tracking small changes that can't be followed by RSS, without having to visit the site: online auction bids, stock exchange values, weather information and more.īesides these two tools, Internet Explorer 8 also includes many interesting new features. Google's power certainly isn't total-it took several years for Internet Explorer 6's usage to halve again-but nonetheless, the company plainly used its dominant position in the video market to improve uptake of its own browser.Regarding Internet Explorer's Web Slices, these are a kind of RSS-style tool that tracks changes and updates to selected websites and keeps you informed about them. With YouTube a far more substantial presence today than it was in 2009, it's quite plausible that the advertising giant's control today is still greater. Google would soon announce a formal end-of-life of support for the old browser, and support was duly dropped on March 13, 2010.Īs welcome as this change was, it's also a little ominous: it shows the substantial influence that Google wielded over the Web. Microsoft, too, announced that it was no longer supporting Internet Explorer 6 in the Office Web Apps. With this success, similar banners spread to other Google properties, including Orkut. It turned out that Google Docs had put up its own similar banner at around the same time, and managers assumed that YouTube had simply copied the Docs banner.Ī month later, Internet Explorer 6 traffic dropped by half, with the recommended browsers each picking up about 3 percent-the same decline seen across the rest of the Web. ![]() But their worries were assuaged once the randomization was demonstrated.īut that was about the extent of the reaction no blowback from senior management, no demands to revert the banner. Next, the OldTubers had to field questions from company lawyers who were initially worried that the banner appeared to give undue prominence to Chrome, as their browsers showed Chrome first. But since the reaction among the media was largely positive-Internet Explorer 6 being widely recognized as obsolete and irritating for almost all Web developers-the PR team was quickly brought on-side. Without any oversight or supervision, the banner was duly deployed.Īlmost immediately, the tech media spotted the banner and reported on it, earning the OldTubers a visit from a rather taken-aback PR team that was now being asked when and why the end of Internet Explorer 6 support was happening. ![]() The banner declared that YouTube would phase out support for their browser "soon" and that they should instead use Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, or Chrome, with those three options shown in a random order to try to avoid being accused of favoring any one browser over the others. The OldTubers decided that they'd show a banner to Internet Explorer 6 users. This was causing the team developing YouTube considerable pain, with weeks of extra work each development cycle to ensure that the site still worked correctly in the old browser. Compared to the alternatives-Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 8, and Google's Chrome-it was slow, unstable, and riddled with proprietary, non-standard behaviors. On its release, the browser had a legitimate claim to be the best, fastest, most standards compliant, and most stable mainstream browser around. Many organizations still running XP appeared to be wishing for a kind of computational stasis: they wanted to be able to run Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 forever, unchanging, which would greatly simplify their maintenance and support costs.īut Internet Explorer 6 was nearly eight years old and seriously showing its age. These were, after all, the dark days of Windows XP corporations had overwhelmingly stuck with Windows XP in spite of the release of Windows Vista, and Windows 7 was still some months from release. Though Internet Explorer 6 was far from current-it had been superseded by versions 7 and 8-it nonetheless made up some 18 percent of YouTube's traffic. YouTube, four years old, has become the Web's leading video site. ![]()
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