Cette décision n’est pas surprenante, le support d’Internet Explorer 6.0 ayant toujours été une difficulté pour les concepteurs Internet. Le support des transparences et des encadrés étant différent des autres navigateurs, en particulier.

Cet abandon par Google représente avant tout pour le géant californien une source d’économies : plus besoin de travailler sur des versions dégradées de ses outils.

Cette décision est aussi pour les concepteurs de site l’occasion de faire indirectement pression sur les usagers d’Internet Explorer 6 qui n’ont pas encore migré. Dommage par contre pour les entreprises dont le Service Infirmatique ne souhaite toujours pas, près de deux ans après l’arrêt du support d’IE 6 par Microsoft, mettre à jour les navigateurs.

Enfin, je croise les doigts pour que le message d’incitation mentionné par Google ne soit pas qu’une incitation directe à migrer à Chrome au détriment des autres navigateurs du marché. Mais au vu de la campagne de pub entamée par Google ces dernières semaines, je ne me fais que peu d’illusions.

Et vous ? Si vous êtes amené aujourd’hui à concevoir une application web, gardez-vous le support d’Internet Explorer 6 ?

From: <apps-noreply@google.com>
Date: 2010/2/2
Subject: Important notice: Google Apps browser support
To: xxxx
Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

1. Ils vous font tout, et un peu plus. Moteur de recherche indispensable, gestionnaire de mails, suite bureautique, navigateur, téléphones et même langage et système d’exploitation ! Souvenez-vous : c’était une mainmise que vous n’acceptiez pas de Microsoft. Et par Google, cela ne vous choquerait pas ?
2. Ils savent tout sur nous. Mails, documents, statistiques sur nos préférences Internet (via Google.com et via tous les sites qui supportent AdSence). Et nous ne savons pas où, comment et par qui nos données personnelles sont stockées, analysées ou… lues. Par exemple, si j’étais patron de la CIA, je passerais beaucoup de temps chez Google…
3. Leur stratégie est opaque et imprévisible. Un exemple ? Le fait qu’Eric Schmidt soit resté au board d’Apple pendant le lancement de l’iPhone alors que Google préparait (secrètement au départ) son OS pour téléphone. Ou bien l’annonce des rachats. Ou celle du nouveau langage. Vous vous y attendiez ?
   Et nous ne sommes dans doute pas au bout de nos surprises…
4. Leur puissance de feu est énorme. Si Google a une idée, il peut facilement aligner des centaines de développeurs pour parvenir à ses fins. Et ruiner les espoirs de ses concurrents (au fait, comment se portent Mappy et ViaMichelin depuis deux ans ?). Je tremble pour JoliCloud (et leur souhaite de reussir). Et non seulement Google propose des services à même s’éloigner ses nombreux concurrents (ou concurrents potentiels), mais il dispose de suffisamment de revenus par ailleurs pour se permettre de le faire… gratuitement. Et d’embellir encore plus son image d’entreprise sympa et altruiste.
   Mais n’oubliez pas que les projets stratégiques de Google ne sont pas Open-Source. Ni gmail, ni wave, ni maps et surtout pas leur moteur de recherche !
   En revanche, Google s’est fait une spécialité dans la mise à disposition au plus grand nombre du bien d’autrui.
5. Y’en a marre du blanc ! Dernier argument, de totale mauvaise foi celui-ci : un jour, nous en aurons assez des interfaces dépouillées et presqu’hospitalières de ses outils !

Alors, soyons prudents. Je proposerai dans un prochain billet quelques alternatives qui valent le coup d’oeil.

Are you afraid too ?

They have money. They have power. They have numerous ramifications. They hold my data, they see what I search, they search what I see. They could even hear what I say. How long before they plunge one of their countless hands in my wallet ? Are they so kind as they say ? What do they want ?

The acquisition of yet another company (AdMob, for that matter) makes me wonder if I can still trust Google. As a digital entrepreneur, is it really a good option to put all of my eggs in the same basket ? Let’s see…

Diary of a Google addict

Ok, I’m a digital entrepreneur. What is the first thing I do when I leave my home in the morning at 06:00 09:26 ? I check my emails on my smartphone. Of course, they are hosted on Google Mail.

Then I call some of my friends. Gee, I may be using a Google Android phone… And even a Google Voice service. I arrive at my office, then I re-re-re-re-check my emails. This time I’m using the web interface of Google Mail.

Now I have to check if my Blogger.com blog has a great success. Of course, Google Analytics give me this information. Got a foreign customer on phone and have a special word to tell him ? I occasionally use Google Translation to check.

I use Google Documents to share sensitive information with my co-workers.

Got a new employee ? Have to register her on my Google Apps management console. Got a meeting out of town ? Just have to check Google Maps with my phone. Want to make money with some website ? I use Google AdSense, it’s easy and powerful. Want to read a book after lunch ? I’ve got Google Books for that.

Many friends of mine are looking after Google Wave. Personally, I could be using Picasa service.

Oh, and by the way… On the web, I search with Google. As 91,23% of the people in my country. It’s so stunning that in their references techniques, most web agencies now only care about Google ranking. So, yes : I dream of my Google Pagerank at night. Bedtime.

Guess what? Google’s not perfect

Ok, most of you readers have never experienced any Google outage. In fact, we mostly fetch the google homepage to check if an internet connexion is working or not. Google is the « metre-etalon » of the web. But… don’t you remember Google Mail outage ? I even experienced strange conditions where I couldn’t receive Orange subscribers mails immediately. Weird. Google has outages.

Because you know what ? Google is not perfect at all. Even the homepage has flaws. Google’s design motto has always been over-simplicity, bare-naked services, white, space, air — even more that Apple. But sometimes I get tired of this impression of seeing a painting that’s not yet finished. Sometimes I like Bing’s colorful background. Sometimes I find a Google tool unpleasant to use.

And sometimes, a service is way too complicated for nothing. For example, Google Analytics is not a model of simplicity, I prefer some other tools (even though I use it anyway).

Their baseline used to be « Don’t be evil« . Right. Sure. Don’t be. Ask Yahoo if they don’t think Google is a little bit evil ? Ask Microsoft if they liked the marketshare crush Google Mail did to Hotmail ? Ask Apple if they’re happy with Android (oh, and by the way, Eric Schmidt, as a board member of Apple, had plenty of time to keep a close look at what their competitor-to-be were doing before leaving the board). Or, even ask ViaMichelin, a small subsidiary of french company Michelin making an online mapping solution, if they found it funny to have their results drop by 75% between 2007 and 2008…

My Google Fears : Outage. Data Leakage. New ideas.

Ok, Google holds a laaaaarge part of my data (email ; documents ; pictures ; blog ; statistics about my website frequentation ; phone information ; and the list goes on and on and on and on). What if an unrecoverable outage happens ? Yeah, shit happens : Microsoft noticed it recently with Sidekick. So, if Google mail has a big outage, then I’m out of business. And you ? What happens if you loose the online data you blindly entrusted to Google ?

I run a business. I have private data. I give them to google, praying God (He’s the one to pray : He stands in the Clouds, after all…) they won’t give it to a competitor of mine. No, this never happens, data is always stored securely. Not even at Twitter. So, what happens if your private data get exposed ? Are you still in business or do you risk much ?

And, last but not least, Google constantly has new ideas. See the ViaMichelin example: they had a nice business, they run it smoothly, they didn’t annoy anybody, it was a french-only service. Then Google came. They run the same service — but for free. Now ViaMichelin has to struggle to survive. Ok, that’s competition, but can any company fight against one that can make as much as 5.7 Billion $ a year ?! That means that if Google has an idea, they can put 100 engineers on it just in a finger snap. Just to try. Just for fun. And, as it’s not what they make money with, just for free. You’re running an internet business ? You just have to pray Google won’t have the same idea as you.

And I’m not talking about the fact that being a competitor AND being hosted on Google Mail shouldn’t be a good idea.

Remember that : Google holds your data. It owns part of it. It owns some media channels (mobile, for example). It has a dominant position on search engines. It owns the tools to analyze it. Now, if you were a Security Consultant, would you allow any of your customers to trust only one company about all those assets? You didn’t think about it ? That leads us to the last point : evangelism.

One more fear : Evangelism.

Last thing : I’m not that afraid of Google. See, I’ve written about Microsoft several times in the post, thinking « hey, it’s not the same thing, it’s Microsoft, they are bad ». Err… Are we really objective about what Google do ? They roll out an unexplainable mail-stuff-shit service called Wave and everybody’s waiting for their invite (Yes, including me. @w_a_s_t_e, by the way ? :)). Microsoft announces Bing and we laugh at them. Seems like an Apple-ish « realty distortion field » is over our heads.

Google is very impersonal. That may explain part of their success : the bare minimum, that works really good.

Be careful. Google might get less fun than they look now. I won’t remove my Google Mail accounts, but now I faced the fact that I’m addictive to Google and it might not be good for my business. Maybe you should worry too, and try using alternatives. Maybe I’ll try to search on Bing from times to times :)