A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

IE6: From Breakthrough to Burden

  • Several commenters recall IE6 being excellent at release and clearly superior to Netscape 4, but turning into a nightmare as it stagnated while the web evolved.
  • Developers describe massive time sinks: extra machines just for IE6 testing, conditional stylesheets, hacks, and doubled or tripled development effort.
  • Some organizations (e.g., pharmacies, big clients) clung to IE6 for years due to risk-averse IT departments and “approved” configurations, forcing vendors to support it long after the wider web moved on.

Updates, Responsibility, and Locked-Down Environments

  • One thread debates whether the “lesson of IE6” is that users can’t be trusted to update.
  • Pushback: if IE6 “did everything users wanted,” they had little incentive to change; blaming users is unfair.
  • Counterpoint: many users couldn’t update due to corporate/educational lockdowns; security updates affect everyone on the network, so optional updates aren’t enough.

From IE6 Hate to Chrome Dominance

  • Some ask if killing IE6 is really a victory given today’s Chrome-dominated world.
  • Broad agreement that Chrome is still vastly better than IE6 ever was, but concern that “Best viewed in Chrome” has replaced “Best viewed in IE.”
  • One commenter alleges Google silently mass-installed ChromeFrame via a shady toolbar partner, calling it effectively a botnet-aided launch; this is presented as insider experience and not challenged with contrary evidence in the thread.

Safari, Standards, and Modern Browser Politics

  • Mixed views on Safari: some see it as the new barrier to web progress, especially on iOS where other engines are forbidden; others argue it’s a brake on Chrome’s unilateral “non-standard” pushes.
  • Discussion of specific APIs (WebGL, WebGPU, SharedWorker, Memory64) illustrates the tension between “ship fast” (Chrome) and slower, more conservative adoption (Safari/Firefox).

YouTube’s IE6 Banner and Its True Impact

  • Many express gratitude for the YouTube team’s “conspiracy” and used YouTube’s deprecation as air cover to drop IE6 themselves.
  • Others argue the banner’s impact is overstated: analytics at the time showed IE declines tracking OS upgrades (e.g., Windows 7) more than any single campaign.

Cobalt: YouTube’s New IE6

  • Ironically, YouTube now maintains compatibility with Cobalt, a stripped-down TV web runtime that can’t be easily updated.
  • This forces the TV frontend to live on a frozen subset of old web APIs, discouraging adoption of newer platform features, and echoing the very legacy constraints IE6 once imposed.