Why IE (Internet Explorer) faded out ?

IE (Internet Explorer) was one of the most popular web browsers from 2002 to 2003, with a market share of 95%; but through the launch of other browsers, Mozilla Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008), by 2015 In the year, the IE browser’s market share was only 15.71%; and it gradually faded out of the mainstream browser market. During the entire decline of the IE browser, the YouTube engineers at the time broke the news that it was they who pushed IE6 (the IE browser version at the time) into the abyss.

About 10 years ago, YouTube’s IE6 users accounted for about 18% of all YouTube traffic. But for web development engineers, the IE6 browser is too old, and UI compatibility needs to be increased, resulting in a doubled workload for engineers. So a group of YouTube engineers quietly launched a plan to weaken IE6. Former Google and YouTube engineer Chris Zacharias revealed, "We only display a simple banner ad on the YouTube page of IE6 users." And that banner ad is a warning message "The browser you are using will soon be eliminated, please Download other newer browsers" and randomly place download points for newer browsers such as Firefox, IE8, Chrome, and Opera.



It is worth mentioning that Google had just acquired YouTube at the time, and the databases and communication channels of the two companies had not yet been fully integrated. In addition, they also found that the company’s internal executives are using browsers other than IE6, so this group of YouTube engineers believes that this is a golden opportunity not to be missed. They set up a special permission group called “OldTuber” to bypass Google executes its own update file and executes the so-called weakening plan.



The banner ad appeared in July 2009, and it was a matter of course that the East Window incident was reported by the major media. The first person to come to this group of engineers was the chief of Google’s public relations department and asked why he did so. Zacharias stated that they explained their position at the time and provided a set of "public relations statements" that could be provided to the media.


In addition to the public relations department, Google’s internal lawyers also want to understand why there are advertisements, worrying that if they first recommend Chrome as a new choice for users, it will violate the EU’s "anti-competitive behavior." But after including Google’s browser product, the lawyer did not ask the engineer to return to his office.


More interestingly, the rest of Google also followed up; Google Docs team also added a similar IE6 warning banner. As a result, traffic from IE6 on YouTube dropped by more than 10%. The traffic of other browsers has also increased relatively, Zacharias said, "The effect is better than our team thought."

    

Picture is from : Chris Zacharias

Later, Google executives finally realized what had happened and made them dumbfounded. These YouTube engineers have achieved their goal, and in 2012 the usage of IE6 in the United States has fallen below 1%.