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> I wonder if it worked in this case because it started a movement?

I think this is the answer. Most people at the time weren't on IE6 out of choice. The fact that youtube (or more likely google docs) had this banner, gave disgruntled employees a better excuse to force IT to upgrade than "I don't like this browser"

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It might have even gotten IT the budget to upgrade, too. I bet it was pretty hard for IT to ask for many millions of dollars to upgrade in-house apps to be cross-browser compatible when there was no urgent need. A banner on every exec's page makes it easier.

The web was also a bit of a different place back then. I think there were people who were "power users" who used Firefox and Chrome and others who used IE because it was bundled with their browser.

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