Microsoft has come up with an innovative way to help drive market share of Internet Explorer 6 down to less than 1%.
Despite being more than a decade old, IE6 still commands 12% of the global market share, according to Net Applications stats cited by Microsoft. IE8 only overtook its elder sibling in terms of market share a year ago.
Currently, one in four Internet Explorer users continues to use IE6, a browser which lacks modern web standards and provides an unsatisfactory user experience
However, in China, it holds a whopping 34.5% slice of the browser pie. Other big IE6 users are South Korea at 24.8% and India at 12.8%.
Norway and Finland are already below Microsoft's 1% threshold, with 0.7% and 0.9% respectively.
To help highlight the issue - and to drive awareness of its soon to be released IE9 - Microsoft has created an IE6 countdown site, showing the current percentages and offering ways to help "move the world off Internet Explorer 6".
"Currently one in four Internet Explorer users continues to use IE6, a browser which lacks modern web standards and provides an unsatisfactory user experience," Microsoft said.
"Ahead of the upcoming release to web of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft is committed to reducing IE6 share as quickly as possible," it said, adding that ditching the ageing browser will mean less work for web developers.
It's not the first time Microsoft has said it wants to get its users off IE6. Ryan Gavin, head of the Internet Explorer business group, said last year he saw it as his job to "destroy IE6", but Microsoft has still refused to stop supporting the ancient browser.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
