Internet Explorer Tax!

[Thinking Aloud]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18440979

The Australian online retailer Kogan.com has introduced the world's first "tax" on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.

Customers who use IE7 will have to pay an extra surcharge on online purchases made through the firm's site.

Chief executive Ruslan Kogan told the BBC he wanted to recoup the time and costs involved in "rendering the website into a antique browser".

continues...

[Pappa]

[klr]

This smells like a stunt to me, and there is a chance this could backfire in terms of PR. A much better option (IMHO) would have been to just tell IE7 users to upgrade to whatever was required.

If enough people are using it, it's not antique. If very few are using it, why bother wasting time and effort supporting it in the first place? According to one set of stats, IE 7 accounts for only just over 2% of market share, and it's been years since it was a major player.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Dafuq still uses IE?

[rachelbean]

And developers around the world clap and sigh "I wish"...

[Bella Fortuna]

Dafuq still uses IE?

My work. It's the "official approved" browser and we're not supposed to use any other. I have to use something else, though, because I can't download data using it.

[Robert_S]

This smells like a stunt to me, and there is a chance this could backfire in terms of PR. A much better option (IMHO) would have been to just tell IE7 users to upgrade to whatever was required.

If enough people are using it, it's not antique. If very few are using it, why bother wasting time and effort supporting it in the first place? According to one set of stats, IE 7 accounts for only just over 2% of market share, and it's been years since it was a major player.

If enough people are too lazy or stubborn to do a free download, then they should pay more. If it really does take that much more time to remain compatible with an oddball browser for which there is no reasonable technical or philosophical reason to do, then it costs the rest of us either in reduced quality or higher cost.

[klr]

This smells like a stunt to me, and there is a chance this could backfire in terms of PR. A much better option (IMHO) would have been to just tell IE7 users to upgrade to whatever was required.

If enough people are using it, it's not antique. If very few are using it, why bother wasting time and effort supporting it in the first place? According to one set of stats, IE 7 accounts for only just over 2% of market share, and it's been years since it was a major player.

If enough people are too lazy or stubborn to do a free download, then they should pay more. If it really does take that much more time to remain compatible with an oddball browser for which there is no reasonable technical or philosophical reason to do, then it costs the rest of us either in reduced quality or higher cost.

But the likely effect of charging someone more is that they go off and immediately upgrade, possibly even after deciding to forego whatever purchase they wanted to make. So the vendor makes little or no money to claw back its extra development effort, which is effectively being spent for the benefit of all web sites by removing IE 7 laggards from the browsing pool. As I said, it would probably have been much more cost-effective to simply say "IE 7? Sorry, please upgrade, it's free.". Actually charging people for using IE7 because it's out of date is likely to get up a lot of people's noses the way a simple "sorry, not supported" message would never do.

[Robert_S]

This smells like a stunt to me, and there is a chance this could backfire in terms of PR. A much better option (IMHO) would have been to just tell IE7 users to upgrade to whatever was required.

If enough people are using it, it's not antique. If very few are using it, why bother wasting time and effort supporting it in the first place? According to one set of stats, IE 7 accounts for only just over 2% of market share, and it's been years since it was a major player.

If enough people are too lazy or stubborn to do a free download, then they should pay more. If it really does take that much more time to remain compatible with an oddball browser for which there is no reasonable technical or philosophical reason to do, then it costs the rest of us either in reduced quality or higher cost.

But the likely effect of charging someone more is that they go off and immediately upgrade, possibly even after deciding to forego whatever purchase they wanted to make. So the vendor makes little or no money to claw back its extra development effort, which is effectively being spent for the benefit of all web sites by removing IE 7 laggards from the browsing pool. As I said, it would probably have been much more cost-effective to simply say "IE 7? Sorry, please upgrade, it's free.". Actually charging people for using IE7 because it's out of date is likely to get up a lot of people's noses the way a simple "sorry, not supported" message would never do.

I'm totally unfamiliar with the windoze world. Is usage of IE7 indicative of customers that are likely to be troublesome in other ways too? As the guy who runs the gas station that doesn't sell lottery tickets or booze once told me: "Not all money is good money!"

[Svartalf]

I'd say that usage of IE 7 is indicative of a completely antiquated computer whose OS is itself an antiquated, no longer supported version... basically, the poor who can't afford anything even vaguely recent and/or the nearly computer illiterate who find ANY computer access a step up from not having access at all.

[klr]

I'd say that usage of IE 7 is indicative of a completely antiquated computer whose OS is itself an antiquated, no longer supported version... basically, the poor who can't afford anything even vaguely recent and/or the nearly computer illiterate who find ANY computer access a step up from not having access at all.

I still prefer to use Office 2003 over 2007, although at times there is isn't much to choose. I wouldn't touch Office 2010. I still use Windows XP (SP3), and will likely not switch to Windows 7 - and certainly never Windows 8. But those are deliberate choices, having seen the options. Other types of software (especially utilities and minor applications), I upgrade as often and as soon as the upgrades become available.

As for browsers: What Chrome - and increasingly Firefox - have managed to do is get people to agree to having their software updated every other day, "no questions asked". I'm not sure that's a good way to be TBH.

[Bella Fortuna]

I keep reading this as "Internet Explorer Taxi."

[Svartalf]

Well, one of the reasons I shifted to palemoon is precisely that I got tired of firefox upgrading too often.

and I've often wished I had kept XP... wasn't given the choice.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I keep reading this as "Internet Explorer Taxi."

Internet Exploding Taxi

[Robert_S]

I get about upgrades myself. Well, more precisely: I tend to get so excited about the new changes.