Microsoft has released an explanation about their support for IE6 - it boils down to something very basic: IE6 shipped with XP, XP is still supported, so they have to support IE6. I get that; we run into similar issues with bugs in older releases that have been fixed in newer ones - but the customer is still on the older (and supported) release. The "just upgrade" argument sounds simple, but it's never as simple as it sounds.

Anyway, the main point from MS:

The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have.

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