Google drops IE8 support in Apps on November 15th (or half of IE users)

Announced on its Apps blog, Mountain View will no longer support IE once IE10 is released.

As we announced last year, we support the latest version of Google Chrome (which automatically updates whenever it detects that a new version of the browser is available) as well as the current and prior major release of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version of one of these browsers is released, we begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

Internet Explorer 10 launches on 10/26/2012, and as a result, we will discontinue support for Internet Explorer 8 shortly afterwards, on 11/15/2012. After this date users accessing Google Apps services using Internet Explorer 8 will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser.

There are still a lot of laggard IT shops running IE7, so cutting off 8 is going to hit some folks. Importantly, Microsoft Windows XP will not run IE 9 or IE 10.

As Computerworld noted:

IE8, on the other hand, was the most widely-used browser edition in the world last month, with a usage share of 25%. Of those who ran one version or another of IE, nearly half, or 47%, ran IE8 in August.

Perhaps it is time to go Chrome (or Firefox, Safari, etc.).