This seems more like Google is retiring support for users of old Microsoft products... considering they're offering both a newer browser, and a newer option for running web sites that requires an old browser... you're only boxed out if you insist on continuing to run an old IE, rather than the newer options available from either company. How often does Microsoft create products to support other companies' legacy users?
hahahahahahahaaa you have no idea the vast amount of windows code that is emulation layers to ensure that other companies legacy users can continue to use programs designed for dos, windows 98 etc.
Google doesnt have to do it, but like i said thats why the c levels insist on microsoft even when their products arent anywhere near the most elegant, feature rich, or performant.
Nah man, he's saying Microsoft goes to extreme lengths to keep old 3rd party software running on new versions of Windows. For a long time (maybe still), there was a principle at MS that upgrading to a new version of Windows should never break a 3rd party app.
I can't speak to the emulation layers, but there are tons of verified stories about MS writing special code that actually watched the running processes and adjusted the behavior of the OS. They'd look for popular apps that utilized bugs/quirks in older version (which were remedied in new updates) and essentially emulated that bug for that one process to keep it working in the new version of Windows. Crazy, crazy stuff. Sim City was a famous example.
From Joel Spolsky:
"I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it, a major no-no that happened to work OK on DOS but would not work under Windows where memory that is freed is likely to be snatched up by another running application right away. The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it."
I'm no fan of MS, but that example speaks to a respectable dedication to a principle – rightly or wrongly.
Yes, Microsoft maintains tons of legacy support for user's running old software on newer platforms - but that's essentially support for their own legacy platforms. They don't go out and provide tools for say, pre-OSX Mac users to get the latest Microsoft Office. Chrome Frame is essentially software that runs on top of Microsoft's legacy, deprecated browser and allows it to have modern functionality.
As the post points out, Google Chrome does have features similar to what you describe to allow backwards-compatibility with legacy sites that need an old browser. That's not this.
