Since launching their IE6 CountdownMicrosoft have been trying to push users onto newer, more up to date web browsers. Microsoft hope to get global usage of Internet Explorer 6 down to less than 1%, allowing web developers to stop supporting it and begin using new techniques and technologies such as HTML 5 which the old browsers cannot interpret.
The United States is the latest country to drop below the 1% usage marker, joining Finland, Norway, Austria, Poland, Sweden and Denmark which have also dropped their usage of Internet Explorer 6. The total usage of Internet Explorer 6 in the UK is at around 1.4% however other countries, such as China, still have a much higher usage.
Following the death of Internet Explorer 6 in the US Roger Capriotti, Microsoft's Director of Internet Explorer marketing, stated in a blog post "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,"
In an effort to prevent users sticking to an out of date version in future Microsoft will begin automatically updating users to the latest version of Internet Explorer through automatic software updates. Users running Windows XP will be upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version compatible with this operating system. While users on Vista and Windows 7 will get Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft's latest browser.
Globally, Internet Explorer is still the most commonly used browser, the two most widespread alternatives, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, are both competing for the number two spot. Some industry experts predict that 2012 could be the year the Internet Explorer drops with either Chrome or Firefox becoming the new browser of choice for most users.