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Comment by webwright | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this argument for why Chrome is going to be a big deal and I don't buy it. Some subset of people click on links and use/buy things just because they are there. The rest of the world does it to solve a problem (real or perceived).

How many ways has MS encouraged upgrading to IE7, yet STILL 50% of salesforce.com users are using IE6. From 2001. For them (or the people with the authority to upgrade), the browser just simply isn't broken enough to warrant the pain of upgrading.

Exactly how much does MS-Office have to suck before people shift to Google Docs? A lot more than it does now.

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Some subset of people click on links and use/buy things just because they are there. The rest of the world does it to solve a problem

Do you have data to back this up? My anecdotal experience with every person I know from my grandma to my niece to my girlfriend suggests exactly the opposite behavior.

The rest of the world clicks on links and uses/buys things just because they are there, and some smaller subset of people do it to solve a problem. ;-)

I think the data from Microsoft's effort to get people to upgrade to ie7 over the last few years is pretty compelling. IE6 seems to be holding on-- presumably because most people don't really see it as broken or needing dramatic improvement.

IE6:IE7 :: MS Office:GDocs is not the best analogy. Lots of people stick with IE6 rather than go to IE7(or FF or Chrome or..) because, for what they do, IE6 is 'ok'. I'll hazard a guess that lots of average web users don't even care about tabs leave alone CSS implementation details. And so, IE6 is 'ok'.

One could argue that MS Office 'sucks' just by costing more than GDocs which is free. If Google wasn't so opaque about what their plan for GDocs is... maybe they should go at it more whole-heartedly and promote it and then see what happens.

Heh-- Office does cost, tho I think MS does a stellar job of hiding it. Of course, they are trading one "suck" for another. Web based Office efforts are pretty freakin' painful, IMO.

I agree. I think that a lot of the people using IE6 are in corporate environments and they can't upgrade until senior management make the decision. When they do upgrade, I reckon the majority won't be to Chrome, but to IE7, as there will be too many corporate Intranet apps that will "just work" on IE7 but take extra time to get functioning on Chrome or Firefox. The risk and cost will be too high for them to change.

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