Google To Discontinue Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 Support

By | June 2, 2011 | 17 Comments

Google To Discontinue Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 SupportDevelopers rejoice.

If dropping the 10 year old web browser support was not enough, IE6 that is, starting from August 1st, Google plans to discontinue Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 web browsers support.

According to the official blog post, company will only support current and prior major releases of the web browsers.

We are pretty excited about the change as there is little to no reason not to upgrade your web browser.

No word about Opera yet.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Anonymous

    Google just need to stop browser sniffing and then opera will work just fine

    • Armin

      Makes you hope that dropping support for these older browsers will allow them to give Opera a bit more attention.

  • Anonymous

    What Google products won’t work in those older browser versions?

  • Anonymous

    What Google products won’t work in those older browser versions?

  • Anonymous

    No word about Opera yet? More like no word about Opera forever, judging by previous Google’s “attention” to the browser.

  • Cousin333

    “No word about Opera yet.”

    Well, Opera was never supported anyway, so no big deal…

  • Opera & IE fanboy

    No big companies like Google,Yahoo, …I think, Opera should talk to these companies and offer help to make the service available for Opera users too. If there are few that Opera needs to support, then Opera should just implement it .

    • Pseudo555

      They do, it’s called browser.js : to fix what’s wrong in your code to fix it in Opera.

      But lot’s of feature are not present due to browser sniffing. Mask Opera as Firefox, you will see fews differences in google…

  • Nobody

    opera was never supported and never will – it is not worth catering to these 2% of users (and shrinking!) while opera is at fault in most of the situations (instant search did not work because of how opera handled – or rather not – history navigation methods – google blocked opera from it, spoofing as firefox ‘made it work’ until you hit ‘back’ button, where pages from TWO steps in history loaded.. opera just only recently started to sort out their navigation object, so maybe in version 13 it will work)

    instead of fixing it (or not breaking it in the first place) opera spent their precious resources on blog trolls to spew bullshit about ‘poor opera being abused by ever other company in the world’

    get a grip opera, you are already irrelevant :) facebook does not support opera, google does not support opera, apple store does not support opera (all these pages ‘work’ only because of browser.js, and in most cases even that heroic effort is not enough)

    and with 11.50 – Yet Another Non-Changing Release – nothing will change. soon it will be 1.xx% again, sweet, sweet

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      No one want Russian users right?

    • uh-oh

      The situation is not black-white. In the US and Western Europe, Opera lags behind seriously. In other countries like Russia and Ukrain, they are leading the pack. 
      They penetrated the mobile market really well, but of course have serious competition from Safari on iOs and the webkoit derivative on Android. Currently, they are already establishing themselves in the TV market.
      They surely have a good vision, they also expanded quite a lot and improved the community relations in recent years. Main difficulties are that they lack the commercial funding of Google and Microsoft (Firefox has the same problem now that Google pushes its own browser) and their partially self-inflicted non-sexy image.
      With the rise of Africa, Opera again has good opportunities.
      Your last sentence however shows who you are: I don’t like Konquerer, Galeon, Maxthon or Lynx. But I don’t take pleasure in the fact their market share is low in the US. I pity you.

      • Nobody

        konqueror/galeon/maxthon/lynx developers are not as arrogant and boastful as opera devs

        k/g/m/l developers dont blame entire world for their low market share, they dont seek global conspiracy, global plot to make their browser remain small and relatively irrelevant

        k/g/m/l developers didnt repeatedly chose  ‘extra’ features that flopped instead of what their users demanded for years (opera autoupdate is still a joke, extensions are half-ass toys, and levels of polish and compatibility with plugins are still dismal etc etc etc)

        and when i see a company claiming that they ‘see the big picture’ deceive their own users (opera desktop IS NO LONGER their main product, it is something that opera has to support, but it is no longer money maker they bet on heavily)

        and beacuse i like when arrogant people get kicked – and opera market share consistently going down for over a year is just so – i rejoice

        what also separates k/g/m/l devs from opera devs – opera devs ‘dont believe’ market share surveys (the worse they are the more).. deny it, belitle its importance etc, but on the other hand, never realy provide data on contrary – empty numbers like ’50mln’ mean nothing when it is not described how these 50mln are counted (monthly, how many uses per month, etc etc – opera never disclosed it)

        summing it up – tried 11.50 – saw that stuff that makes me not even consider using opera is still there, uninstall, will wait for 12.01 (12.00 will be too buggy to even try)

        • Qa

          Well, fine. I refuse to try out Chrome for the same reason you look down on Opera. Then don’t use it. There is choice enough nowadays, luckily.
          Opera receives a lot of money (search engines) from their desktop product. Both the desktop versions and the mobile versions receive a lot of attention. That is my opinion – but you may retain yours.
          wrt market shares: there is not a single browser that expresses their trust in them. There is also not a single decent survey that clearly describes how the data is gathered. Ah well…
          I am looking forward to 12.0, but history proves your stance right: 12.01 will be way more stable.

    • Anonymous

      Your message has a point…

      Can’t all those sites organize conspiracy against Opera. Sounds more reasonable if it’s Opera’s problem. Like the Google-Images not shown as in Fx & Chrome, some fans crying about “Opera is not getting enough attention” for this too.

      Also, Opera for long time doesn’t follow the “trends” ( call it Marketing, as you wish ). Takes its own path. I don’t say that’s not O.K. but seems it didn’t went so well. They spend much time on useless things, rather than make the browser more compliance. At last… Keep using Unite, Chat, Speedial ( they had entire versions dedicated to Speedial ) and stay away from other goods, like HWA, Tabs running on their own processes, Native Ui and many more.Opera seems to have quarreled with the word “Native” in general.

  • Pingback: Google streicht unterstützung für ältere Browser « Browser Fuchs

  • DWBH

    How about chrome version 1 ?

    • Bas

      Chrome usually auto-updates, so little to no people are using older versions of Chrome. And if they are it is mostly by choice. 

«
»