Former Google engineer revealed how the company had planned to kill Internet Explorer 6

For a long time, Google has always been perceived by the outside world to use its own network products to manipulate the browser market, and now Google engineers seem to confirm this problem. Chris Zacharias, who was also a former YouTube engineer, revealed that the early days of the Google engineers team were tired of adapting to the troubles of the browser.

So in 2009, Google engineers made a bold decision: When using IE6 browser to access YouTube, you will see a message that will stop supporting. “To cement their authority over the YouTube codebase during the integration into Google, the early engineers created a specialized permission set called “OldTuber”. OldTuber granted you the ability to completely bypass the new Google-oriented code enforcement policies, enabling anyone holding it to commit code directly to the YouTube codebase, with only the most glancing of code reviews from anyone. No need for code readability. No need for exhaustive tests. No need for maintaining code coverage.”  The OldTubers decided that they’d show a banner to Internet Explorer 6 users. At the time, IE6 browsers accounted for 19% of the desktop browser market share, and Google’s claims quickly reduced the IE6 market share to around 10%. This statement eventually spread quickly from YouTube to other Google sites.

Via: chriszacharias