The aging platform, IE 6, that some attribute to slower adoption of Internet standards has been dropped by Google Reader. While this is only a small step towards removing support for IE 6 across the entire Internet, it does continue to show that Google is serious about axing support for IE 6 across most of its products.
Google is not shy about its plans to remove IE 6 support as it was not too long ago that they stopped supporting IE 6 on YouTube. According to Techcrunch.com IE 6 is not the only platform that is getting the axe; "Firefox 1.0 and 2.0, Safari 2.0 and 3.0, and even Chrome versions 1, 2, and 3 are all being pulled." Google states that by pulling support for the older browsers that they will be able to focus on improving the product rather than fixing issues with the older web browsers.
While pulling the support for IE 6 is a good move, it may not help to remove IE 6 from the Internet sphere. Unfortunately large corporations are among those who have yet to move to more modern browsers. Because of the immense testing of legacy systems that is required to upgrade, it is simply not cost effective to upgrade a browser version for new features that will not improve business productivity.