In its time, the Internet Explorer 6 browser was quite popular. It’s hard to believe, but 10 years ago it held a fifth of the market. It was used both in Russia and abroad, primarily by government structures, banks, and similar organizations. And it seemed that there would be no end to 'the six'. However, its demise was accelerated by YouTube. Surprisingly, this happened without approval from management.
Former employee Chris Zacharias , who inadvertently became the 'gravedigger' of the popular browser. He recounted that in 2009, many web developers were unhappy with Internet Explorer 6 because they had to create their own site versions for it. However, the management of large portals ignored this. So, the YouTube engineering team decided to take action themselves.
The essence of it is that the developers added a small banner that the system displayed only in IE6. It informed users that they were using an outdated browser and suggested updating to currently relevant versions at that time. They were confident that their actions would go unnoticed. The fact is that the old YouTube developers had privileges that allowed them to make changes to the service without approval. These privileges remained even after Google acquired the video service. Moreover, almost no one at YouTube used Internet Explorer 6.
However, just two days later, the head of public relations contacted them because users began reporting on the banner. While some were writing panic emails about 'When will Internet Explorer 6 come to an end?', others supported YouTube as a promoter of newer and safer browsers. The company's lawyers merely inquired whether the banner violated antitrust regulations, after which they calmed down.
The most interesting part began later. Management learned that the engineers were acting without approval, but by that time Google Docs and other Google services had already implemented this banner into their products. Employees from other divisions of the search giant sincerely believed that the YouTube team simply copied the implementation from Google Docs. Finally, this idea began to be copied by other resources not related to the search engine, after which the abandonment of Internet Explorer 6 became just a matter of time.
