Having recently announced their plans to ‘sunset’ Internet Explorer 11 and Legacy Edge in favor of their Chromium-based Edge browser, Microsoft will say goodbye to their 8-year-old Explorer 11 near the end of next year. With that, Google has already begun to make plans for their Workspace customers to ensure that they continue receiving a consistent and secure experience before that date. Support for Workspace apps on IE11 ends on March 15, 2021.
Workspace users who are still operating on the late browser will begin seeing a banner at the top of all of their apps (which here means websites – Gmail, etc.) reminding them to upgrade to an alternative that supports Google’s services. Admins should encourage their users to make the switch sooner rather than later.
Though they do list Firefox, Safari, and Chromium Edge, there’s no doubt that this shift presents an opportunity to bring more users over to Chrome. Honestly, even if Explorer 11 users do switch to Edge, they’ll still be using Chromium, the open-source browser that both are built from. In the end, the user wins as Chromium is both safer and faster than the legacy architecture that Internet Explorer 11 was created on. Today’s news is not surprising but fully expected and the very fact that Microsoft built the new Edge with Chromium was the handwriting on the wall.
Workspace Essentials
This update impacts all Workspace tiers
Business Starter
Business Standard
Business Plus
Enterprise Essentials
Enterprise Standard
Enterprise Plus
G Suite Basic
G Suite Business
G Suite Education
Enterprise for Education
Nonprofits customers
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