I just received this email from Google as I administer several Google Apps accounts. In it, Google relates their reasons for discontinuing support for IE6. As a web developer, this is music to my ears because IE6 is a notoriously irritating browser to design for, often requiring custom code in order to make it render sites that work in most typical browsers.

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar. Continue Reading

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time: You can now insert images in the body of your emails in Gmail.

Starting today, you can put your Gmail account on autopilot. From Google:

As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.

Visit the link above to find out how Gmail Autopilot can automatically respond people like Nigerian scam artists, friends, colleagues or your therapist.

The 2008 Google Zeitgeist has been released. Check it out to see what everyone has been searching the web for this year.

The LIFE photo archive is now available on Google. The collection dates all the way from the 1750s to today. Read more about the archive on the official Google blog.

Soon you’ll be able to send SMS text messages from Gmail chat. I for one am really looking forward to this feature. Plus, for users of my online text messaging form, this feature may be what gets them started using Gmail.

P.S. If you’re a fan of my text messaging form, don’t worry. I will continue to keep it available on my site.

Google has added a new experimental feature to Gmail: Mail Goggles. Its aim is to make sure that you really want to send an email by asking you simple math problems to verify you’re in your right mind. By default, it is set to only be active late at night on weekends (the time they say you’re most likely to need it).

Perhaps this will be a great feature for some; however, a more useful feature would be to delay sending an email 5 or 10 seconds after you press Send. That way if you catch an error, you can cancel the email and correct your mistake.

UPDATE: I just noticed that I titled this post “New Gmail Feature: Are You Sure You Want to Sent That?” Perhaps WordPress should consider adding a similar feature for bloggers that asks, “Are you sure you want to publish that?”

“Chrome is not in a ‘browser war’ with Firefox and Internet Explorer. It’s a different animal.” Read more about Google’s strategy in the Linux Journal.

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, Google now lets you search in Pirate speak.

Yesterday, I wrote about the latest web browser that is quickly making inroads on the web: Google Chrome. Among all the oohs and ahhs it has been generating, many people have questioned whether or not the browser’s terms of service give Google ownership over any content you publish via their browser. Fortunately, Google has cleared things up. Section 11.1 of Chrome’s revised TOS now simply reads, “You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the title of this post was inspired by this popular meme.