They are wasting money by using IE6. Yes you can argue, that they pay for IE6 development and thus its their money and that we should not care.
However it is we who sell Win7 and IE6 support at the same time. And by supporting IE6 we lock our customers into stone age even more.
There are plenty of alternatives for any software that had to be done via ActiveX 7 years ago. It is completely our (industry) fault that banks and large corporates keep using IE6 - since we would rather milk them dry with our shitty solutions than to help them move on.
So what are you proposing... That banks and large corporates keep using Win XP for the next 10,20 years (????).
What about general productivity, usability, security, etc?
What these victims should (but will not) learn is that buying software on the cheap, with disregard to open standards is extremely costly and unwise.
Yes, it costs money to stop using IE6. It also costs money to deploy, test, train users to use, rewrite all other applications to use a new browser. When the former cost is greater than the lesser, businesses will upgrade.
I fail to see how its the fault of outside vendors that their clients or customers are still using an old browser. And if it's an in-house IT shop, it's purely a cost/business decision. You make it sound as if corporations are not upgrading out of laziness.
Same old set of excuses, covering gross negligence and incompetence that is going on in corporate IT departments. Its hard to train users and IT is against it - are two largest straw men arguments on this topic.
I was leading a development effort on this type of project and I took strong position that IE6 shall not be supported (due to some conflicting technical requirements in Request for tender). This specific IT department was delighted with our stance, since nowadays there are literally less than 5% of users who actually prefer their archaic IE6 solutions (which are usually people who don't actually use thy system, but are in position of "power"). This specific IT department also begged us to raise hardware requirements from 500Mhz Pentium III with 512Mb RAM (since that would enable them to push for an upgrade) - which we didn't.
Anyways - end users (yes those "computer illiterate" old ladies, everybody keeps on patronizing) were delighted by added usability that got enabled by using modern browsers. We were able to fulfill all the requirements a lot cheaper than dragging IE6 for that knucklehead department head would allow us to.
The fault of outside vendors is that they don't tell/show their users what they are missing on. The fault of outside vendors is that they don't explain security risks they are being exposed to, by using archaic software. The fault of outside vendors is that they don't help their customers to not pile even more opportunity costs related to stone age software.
Ok, how about considering a different demographic: China.
IE6 remains by far the most popular desktop web browser in China (Statcounter [1] says 50% of the market). If my site is targetting a Chinese audience, IE6 support is a must and no amount of persuasion will move the entire Chinese market to Chrome in a hurry.
Another strawman. People using pirated OS's and being technically unsophisticated to the degree of being satisfied with what IE6 has to offer are extremely unlikely to buy your service or to provide any significant value to your advertisers. Basically they are leeches that will use whatever is cheapest/most convenient to them. Thus not having them as your user will only spare you some resources.
But if they really want to use your service - they will upgrade in a heartbeat (upgrading or changing a browser is no significant undertaking nowadays). If they are using your service via Cybercafes - they will get the proprietors to install another browser.
Your argument merely tells me that you either haven't developed or seriously thought about developing a service for Chinese market.
People in those areas using IE6 do pay for services. I know. We were debating this very question, and decided to look at our paid users browser choices, and IE6 was, while not the majority, not the least of our concerns, either. Furthermore, the net loss of loosing IE6 users would have been the salary of a number of people.
Finally, we can support IE6 without losing out on the benefits of newer browsers.
Arguing for or against IE6 using made up fanciful arguments (people using IE6 aren't going to buy your product) is silly. Look at your own numbers. If your first suggestion isn't that, you're ignorant of the realities of web development.
Then they need to be frozen out of ALL vendors. Eventually, it will hurt more to find the one guy left in the world who still does IE6 and pay him the ridiculous hourly rate he asks.
I think your last sentence explains why it will never happen - if one guy will be left making a killing by supporting IE6, why would everyone else have gotten out of the game? Certainly the ridiculous hourly rate he charges will offset the cost of maintaining IE6 support.
That said, I hate css as much as the next twenty-something web developer :)
However it is we who sell Win7 and IE6 support at the same time. And by supporting IE6 we lock our customers into stone age even more.
There are plenty of alternatives for any software that had to be done via ActiveX 7 years ago. It is completely our (industry) fault that banks and large corporates keep using IE6 - since we would rather milk them dry with our shitty solutions than to help them move on.
So what are you proposing... That banks and large corporates keep using Win XP for the next 10,20 years (????).
What about general productivity, usability, security, etc?
What these victims should (but will not) learn is that buying software on the cheap, with disregard to open standards is extremely costly and unwise.