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Comment by devspade | Hacker News Reader

So far the most votes are for "IE can and should be killed". Should is debatable, sure. But I'm interested in how. Because I'd argue it can't be done by anyone not named Steve Balmer at the moment.

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The problem is, that except a tiny fraction of developers no consumer cares about their browser as long as it just works. There is no reason to switch. A browser is simply a browser no matter what its name is. All seem to do the same. The most common reason people activly change their browser is, as far as I noticed, because it's a new trend (firefox and now chrome).

And noone can blame business, that it doesn't dare to loose a significant amount of customers by not supporting IE with their website.

sure it could: if even a handful of major sites decided to simply block IE, it'd be dead in the water. that's EXTREMELY unlikely to happen, but it's certainly possible.

this is the one place you might have a shot - if google, amazon, facebook, etc - were just like you straight can't use IE or our sites - then maybe, but no chance the big dogs do something like that

I wonder if there are any petitions out there for the cause of ending IE. I'm sure there are but obviously none have been properly executed.

It'd be a super long shot, but I'd bet that with some generous donations and a proper campaign, a viral petition could get thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of signatures requesting that something seriously be done about IE. Could Steve Balmer and Microsoft ignore hundreds of thousands of people? Sure. Would they? Maybe. They do seem to think they know what's best for everyone. Would it hurt to try? Definitely not.

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