Google announced on Friday they will be phasing out support for IE6, and quick.  Starting March 1 IE6 users will lose key functionality in Docs and Sites.  From their blog,

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.

Unfortunately, it looks like the ancient browser will still work on Google itself; this appear to impact Google Apps and I have read other reports indicating it will also apply to gmail later in 2010. Not a huge surprise.  Digg, Mint, YouTube and many others have already phased out IE functionality.  It was simply taking up too much coding time to get features to work properly. The fact that IE6 was the source of Google’s breach probably didn’t help its case.

So if IE6 is so bad, why are people still using it?

Simple answer: they can’t switch— their IT department won’t let them upgrade. When digg polled their users it found 70% if their users were locked into IE6 due to IT policy restrictions. Which, bluntly, is lazy, stupid and dangerous.

So, what’s a person to do? Upgrade, obviously.  Any other browser around will provide a better user experience (any browser). If you develop applications or sites, I follow Digg and Google, ignore IE6.

And if someone in charge of an IE6-only IT policy is reading this, drop me a line.  I would love to fully understand why putting your infrastructure at risk is somehow safer.

And if you can’t upgrade, fight.