By Gregg Keizer
January 3, 2012
Source: Computerworld

Microsoft said its campaign to drive Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) into extinction had done its job in the U.S., where fewer than 1% of users ran the decade-old browser last month.

Microsoft has been trying to put a stake in the heart of IE6 for more than two years, starting in the summer of 2009. Last March, the company added to the down-with-IE6 campaign by launching a deathwatch website for the browser.

IE6's share on desktop and notebook computers was 7.3% last month, down seven-tenths of a percentage point from the month before and 6.2 points fewer than a year earlier. Most of the remaining copies of IE6 are run by Chinese users of Windows, said Microsoft. Almost one-in-four Chinese PCs used IE6 to access the Internet in December, while Chinese users accounted for 58% of all copies of IE6 run worldwide that month.

Microsoft has plans to drain the pool of IE6 users even lower. Three weeks ago, Microsoft announced it would begin to automatically upgrade IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP to IE8 this month in Australia and Brazil, and gradually expand the program in 2012 to other countries.

During the months it beat the "kill IE6" drum, Microsoft has said nothing of IE7's future, perhaps because that 2006 browser currently controls only 4.8% of the browser usage market, far below its peak of 35.9% in January 2009.

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