Software giant Microsoft has released a new website with the expressed aim of killing off its Internet Exploder 6 browser. Redmond released IE 6 more than ten years ago, and it is a security soft target, having ceased to be supported.

The new website is dedicated to tracking IE6’s dwindling market share and encouraging users to upgrade to a more modern browser. IE6 was probably the most successful browser in history and Microsoft took a lot of time and money to make it so. It also has to spend millions per year trying to fix IE6 security vulnerabilities.

Strangely there are still 12 per cent of the world which will not upgrade. Although the situation is worse in places like China where it is still used in one in three machines.

The new site, IE6Countdown.com, is encouraging users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 which is a two year old browser with security vulnerabilities too. IE 9 will soon be here, but it doesn’t support Windows XP.

To the final user it must seem that Redmond is asking its users to jump from one useless, buggy, insecure browser to another. Or maybe just get rid of Windows XP too.