The secret plot on YouTube to kill Internet Explorer 6

Nearly 10 years ago, YouTube began posting a banner for Internet Explorer 6 users, warning that Microsoft's browser support would "disappear soon." This was a message that appeared on every page of YouTube, at a time when IE6 users accounted for about 18% of YouTube's total traffic. Frustrated with aging browser support, a group of YouTube engineers had developed a plan to eliminate Internet Explorer 6.

"We started together to imagine how we could take revenge on IE6," says Chris Zacharias, a former Google engineer and YouTube. "The plan was very simple. We would place a small banner on top of the video player that would only appear for IE6 users. A group of engineers put this banner in place, knowing that most YouTube employees using the company's staging environment would not even see it. At the time, Google had acquired YouTube a few years before the IE6 banner and the video-sharing site was not really fully adapted to its infrastructure and rules.

YouTube engineers had created a special set of permissions, called "OldTuber", to bypass Google's code application rules and make changes directly to YouTube's code base. with a limited number of code revisions. Zacharias and some other engineers have obtained OldTuber permissions, allowing them to put the banner in place with very little control. "We have seen before us an opportunity to paralyze IE6 permanently, which we may never find again," Zacharias admits.

The banner appeared in July 2009 and the press coverage immediately endorsed Google's move to remove Internet Explorer 6 support from YouTube. "The first person to come to our office was the head of the public relations team," says Zacharias. All major technical publications asked why YouTube was threatening to remove IE6 support, at a time when the browser was still used frequently. "We told them impatiently [PR] all about what we had launched and helped them to develop the necessary discussion points to develop the story already established by the media. "

Two Google lawyers also wanted to know why YouTube had put the banner in place. "They immediately demanded that we remove the banner," reveals Zacharias. Lawyers feared that Chrome would first be promoted as an alternative browser, raising fears that European regulators would seek anticompetitive behavior. But it turned out that YouTube engineers had programmed the banner to randomly display browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer 8 and possibly Opera, and they demonstrated it to lawyers. "Satisfied with the protest, the lawyers quickly pulled out of their office without further concern," Zacharias said.

The banner has been extended to other Google properties. The Google Docs team has added a similar warning message regarding IE6 support. "One of their IE6 testing engineers had noticed the YouTube banner shortly after it went live and immediately sent it to their manager to ask why they should do the same," says Zacharias. Google's internal discussions focused on adding the IE6 banner to the Docs team. YouTube's original technical team has "bypassed detection as the creators of the IE6 banner inside Google."

This resulted in a massive drop in Internet Explorer 6 traffic on YouTube. "In a month, our YouTube IE6 user base has been halved and more than 10% of global IE6 traffic has shrunk, while all other browsers have increased in corresponding proportions," says Zacharias. "The results have been better than those predicted by our web development team."

YouTube's technical managers finally understood what had happened, but it was too late and they "reluctantly concluded that the ends had justified their means." YouTube's rebel engineers successfully cracked their secret plan to kill Internet Explorer 6 and in April 2012. The use of IE6 had dropped below 1% in the United States. Even Microsoft was celebrating the death of IE6.

The complete story of Chris Zacharias is worth reading for all the details of this unusual plot to kill IE6.