Automatic IE6 Upgrades in 2012

Microsoft will begin to automatically update its Internet Explorer browser starting 2012. The upgrade will come together with the automatic Windows update if it's enabled. According to Microsoft the reason for this change is security as the newer versions of IE have proven to deliver consistent security improvements.

The company already provides security updates to Internet Explorer through Windows Update, but this means that legacy browser users will see a full-point jump. Windows XP users on Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 will be upgraded to version 8, and Windows Vista users will be pushed up the stairs to Internet Explorer 9. IE9 doesn't work on Windows XP.

Security problems are a tough stair to climb for legacy browsers. The latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report is just the latest in a long line of papers indicating that socially engineered malware is the biggest kind of threat facing computer users today, and that the malware often goes after security holes in browsers. These findings are based on data collected from more than 600 million computer systems in more than 100 countries. It's neither easy nor cheap to keep a team of dedicated security researchers and coders on a legacy browser.

The change in update policy will affect some aspects of how Internet Explorer has updated in the past, but not all. The update will continue to respect a person's default browser choice and default search engine, and users who have disabled Windows Update won't see an IE version bump. On the one hand, this is very polite of Microsoft, but it's also a tacit acknowledgment that there's little the company can do about people running cracked copies of its operating systems unless Windows Update is running.

Microsoft maintains a site, IE6Countdown.com, to track the worldwide decrease in Internet Explorer 6 use across all operating systems. Right now, less than 1 percent of northern Europe uses IE6, but more than 23.6 percent of China does, and worldwide percentage stands at around 8.3 percent.

Interestingly, Microsoft could tumble and find itself burdened with the same legacy problem in a few years. Not only does Internet Explorer 9 not work on Windows XP, but the company has no plans to make Internet Explorer 10 compatible with Windows Vista. IE10 will launch on Windows 8. So it's entirely possible that in late 2012, you'll have Windows XP users on IE8, Vista and some Windows 7 users on IE9, and the rest of the Windows 7 users and Windows 8 users on IE10. While that's not directly analogous to the fiery, flaming security hellmouth that IE6 and, to a lesser degree, IE7, have become in recent years, it's an eventuality that restricted backwards compatibility makes hard to avoid.