How YouTube engineers plotted to kill Internet Explorer 6

San Francisco: A former Google employee has revealed how a group of engineers plotted to kill Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 on its YouTube platform nearly 10 years ago. According to a report in The Verge on Saturday, YouTube in 2009 started displaying a banner to Internet Explorer 6 users, warning that support for Microsoft’s browser would be “phasing out” soon. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.

Frustrated by supporting the aging browser, “we began collectively fantasizing about how we could exact our revenge on IE6”, revealed Chris Zacharias, a former Google and YouTube engineer. “The plan was very simple. We would put a small banner above the video player that would only show up for IE6 users,” he was quoted as saying. The message appeared on all YouTube pages - “at a time when IE6 users represented around 18 per cent of all YouTube traffic”. (IANS)

Also Read: INTERNATIONAL