In a move that couldn't make the fellas in the Portland office any happier, Google announced that they will no longer support Internet Explorer 6. Beginning March 1, users of IE6 will notice that certain Google services, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites, will stop working well and eventually won't work at all.

Internet Explorer 6 has been a major headache for web developers everywhere. IE6 is well-known for bugs and incomplete, inconsistent, and often incorrect support for Web standards. Hearing that Google is beginning to phase out their support of IE6 gives developers around the world more confidence to do so themselves and encourage their users to download more recent browser software such as Internet Explorer 7 or 8, Firefox, Google Chrome, or Opera.

Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth recently wrote, “The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.”

Even Microsoft itself won’t be supporting IE6 in its own Office Web applications. However, though Microsoft has been encouraging Windows users to update to IE7 and IE8, it intends to support IE6 through 2014.