Gmail Notice Touts Chrome And Firefox, Dismisses IE

Gmail Notice Touts Chrome And Firefox, Dismisses IE

Google is pushing users of its Gmail e-mail service to dump Microsoft's Internet Explorer for its own Chrome browser or Mozilla's Firefox. When users of IE6 reach Gmail.com, a "Get faster Gmail" message appears in the Web-based service's menu bar. The message, in turn, links to a page on Google's Web site that touts Chrome and Firefox 3 as being "twice as fast" at running Gmail.


Google currently lists IE7, Firefox 2.0 and later releases, Chrome and Safari as the only supported browsers for Gmail. Others, including Opera and older editions of IE, Firefox, and Safari, can be used to access the e-mail service but aren't able to handle some of its features.

More than 21 percent of users who browsed the Internet last month ran IE6, according to Web metrics company Net Applications.