Also in the mail this morning is a nastygram from Google to Microsoft. Why it came to me is somewhat a mystery. Therefore I feel I must relay its contents. They are:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

The writing on the wall here is that Google isn’t happy about supporting the few of us who have not upgraded because it poses a serious security threat. Our own Jon Gallagher backs up the claim that any of our clients doing business online should seriously consider dropping support for IE6 and below explicitly. We’re glad Google is helping us tell this story too. While the Google apps ecosystem is catering to a more tech-savvy and security-conscious group online. What’s more it’s planting a flag firmly in the ground for the open-source alternatives in Firefox and Safari. The browser wars go on. But as more of our work is done online, less of it will be done with Microsoft.