Google Tries to "Encourage" Users to Upgrade Browsers

By Staff Reporter - 02 Sep '14 07:56AM

Google, in a bid to push users to update, deliberately started showing older versions of its search page this weekend to those using the outdated versions of some web browsers.

In a Google forum, many of those using the out-of-date versions reported seeing the 2013 version of the Google as well as image search home pages while working on the older browsers, BBC reports. The problem was reported by those using variants of Safari 5.1 and Opera 12.

Later, a message on behalf of the company stated that the change was intentionally made to "encourage" people to upgrade their browsers.

This is in line with Mountain View's policy on some of its Google properties like Gmail that it claims do not support stale browsers.

According to the Economic Times, one of the users - DJSigma - posted on Google's official users forum: "A few minutes ago, Google's homepage reverted to the old version for me. I'm using Opera 12.17. If I search for something, the results are shown with the current Google look, but the homepage itself is the old look with the black bar across the top. It seems to affect only the Google homepage and image search... It doesn't matter whether I'm signed in or signed out. Nothing works. Please fix this,"

To this, a Google Employee named "Nealem" replied: "I want to assure you that this isn't a bug. It's working as intended. We're continually making improvements to Search, so we can only provide limited support for some outdated browsers. We encourage everyone to make the free upgrade to modern browsers - they're more secure and provide a better web experience overall...You'll need to hunt and peck through the links to access Google+, YouTube and other Google services. Worst of all, Google Suggest is completely disabled. The message is clear: upgrade or bust."

While others continued to complain about Google's "clunky" search homepage, some Safari 5.1.x and Opera 12.x users were able to use the intended version by adhering to a "cheat-method"; by customizing their browser's user agent.

Meanwhile, in a separate forum, a user named MadFranko008 was able to show that even modern browsers such as the current version of Chrome were also exhibiting some glitches on Apple Mac computers. Google immediately responded by fixing the "bug" in Chrome.