Sometimes, it makes sense to retire products. And if you're not making money on the product, then it can be expensive to keep supporting it. I think six months is still a reasonable amount of advanced notice. No matter what, a small minority will be unhappy.
I think the real lesson here is: don't build something serious on top of a product you don't pay for and you don't have any guarantees on support.
I understand this completely. But moves like this is why you see Internet Explorer 6 still in the wild. Because C-levels can be confident that Microsoft will continue to provide baseline support, security patches, and forever. My boss didn't even get annoyed, he just said 'too funny' and reminded me of when he was telling me to just build on IE7 baseline.
6 Months in the Enterprise world is a barely time enough to sneeze... Anyways I am fine, its a lesson learned.
IE6 was released 11 years ago, which is beyond forever for a browser version to be supported. No other vendor that I'm aware of provides support for browsers from that era.
The sad problem is, if you want to build a product for large corporates, a lot of folks are still stuck on old XP workstations with the default software installed (IE7 if you're lucky), and likely will be well beyond the MS support window. This is just part of doing business in that sector, but I think we can all agree that having to build for IE6/7 compatibility stifles a lot of innovation.
IE on Windows XP actually. IE follows the support lifecycle of the Windows version it is installed on since IE6 SP1, and IE 5.01 on Win2000 follows the support lifecycle of Win2000 too.
Will Microsoft continue providing baseline support for IE6 indefinitely? I doubt it. The top Google hit for "ie6" is http://www.ie6countdown.com, which is Microsoft's own site for tracking and celebrating the death of IE6. I imagine that once those numbers get low enough around the world, they'll stop supporting it.
One wasn't "paying" with money. But Google wants to move all of IT in a certain direction (where cloud and web based technology is acceptable). Therefore Google provided the illusion that it's possible to mix ancient IE6-IT with modern Chrome web apps. Developers could feel save that it's okay to use modern technology and still be able to reach old shops. And old shops might have started to adopt modern web apps, also from google. Now they are forced to think again how to keep the old IE6-intranet running next to some Google Docs stuff they bought...
So Chrome Frame helped Google a bit to extend a certain market for them by a little bit.
Google still doesn't get paid, but they certainly didn't do Google Frame out of altruism.
I was going to point this out as well, and it actually seems like a better solution. Default everyone to a modern browser with updates, and then throw them out to whatever you need to use for compatibility if needed.
Chrome Frame always seemed like a nasty hack which was unlikely to get much traction in companies that haven't updated from IE6.
> Now they are forced to think again how to keep the old IE6-intranet running next to some Google Docs stuff they bought...
Since they already switched from supporting IE6 to using modern technology as if IE6 didn't exist, then maybe they just won't bother switching back. Maybe it will be more cost-effective, at least for some of them, to finally ditch IE6. And that would be a win. The cancellation of Google Frame may be what is needed to break the feedback loop that keeps IE6 afloat.
He is saying he just learned that lesson. Free Google software isn't a reliable foundation for a business decision. Compare to Microsoft, who have a track record keeping their technologies alive and supported for many years.
The other lesson is: Use open source solutions. If a company drops support for something that's open source, you have the option to pay someone else (or DIY) to continue that support going forward.
Sometimes, it makes sense to retire products. And if you're not making money on the product, then it can be expensive to keep supporting it. I think six months is still a reasonable amount of advanced notice. No matter what, a small minority will be unhappy.
I think the real lesson here is: don't build something serious on top of a product you don't pay for and you don't have any guarantees on support.