[johns]

Except, that will never happen before the support lifecycle expires. It would be devastating to their enterprise sales. One reason you buy Microsoft at a large company is because they promise support for 10 years. If they renege on that with IE6, it would get too much exposure and enterprise IT departments would revolt and MS would start losing ground in one of their last strongholds.

[superdavid]

Exactly. Microsoft's enterprise business is built on backwards compatibility, and they've already had a few breakages in recent years, with (most things in) Vista, and the recent announcement that Windows Mobile apps won't run in Windows Phone 7.

[cookiecaper]

Well, isn't that ten year support timeline due for expiration in the next year or so? I'm going from memory here so please correct me if not.

[superdavid]

That would be for the initial release, but not for the service packs unfortunately. IE6 was still standard (and had some security enhancements) in XP SP2.