Google to stop supporting IE6 for Gmail – Google announced that it is to suspend Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) support for its Gmail and Calendar services later this year. The move will come at some point after March 1, when Google will start scaling back IE6 support for Google Docs and Google Sites. Google announced that decision on Friday, two weeks after the company admitted that hackers had breached its network and stolen information. On Google's no-support list along with IE6 are Mozilla's Firefox 2.0, Apple's Safari 2.0 and Google's own Chrome 3.0. Gmail is the world's third-largest web-based email service, with an estimated 146 million users, according to 2009 data from Comscore. Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are the top two services, with approximately 343 million and 285 million users, respectively. Google's urging users to leave IE6 is only the latest in a long line of major web properties dropping support for the nearly-nine-year-old browser.

Microsoft adds new procedures to Windows 7 activation – Microsoft is revising the way it authenticates copies of Windows 7, the company has announced. Microsoft is adding to Windows 7 a new signature-based approach for checking if an OS is properly licensed. This signature checking will happen in addition to the key-based verification process. Windows 7 users with automatic updates will have their copies reinspected by the company's new activation process. Those running validly obtained copies of Windows 7 should not notice the check at all. This is the first update to the Windows Activation Technologies for Windows 7. Although any edition of Windows 7 can use the activation, Microsoft won't initially push it out to Windows Starter and Windows Basic, as those two editions aren't pirated that often. Nor will it be pushed out to enterprise customers. Like the signatures used by antivirus software, the new signature-based inspection will look for clusters of related changes to the OS that indicate the licensing procedures have been circumnavigated. If the software does find the characteristics of a hacked copy of Windows, it will then place the OS in the unactivated mode, which means the desktop wallpaper will be changed to black, and various pop-ups and tray messages will persistently remind the user of the OS' unverified state.

Windows to promote random browsers from March 1 – Microsoft has revealed that Internet Explorer users will be given a choice of which browser they want to surf the web with from March 1. Microsoft said Windows 7, XP, Vista users would be offered an automatic download of the browser ballot screen, which provides a choice of five browsers and is currently undergoing internal testing, over the next few weeks. Microsoft said anyone running Internet Explorer as their default browser would see the screen, which offers more information and links to download Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera, as well as IE. Microsoft said the list is presented in random order, in keeping with the company's agreement with the European Commission. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer is the most-used web browser, accounting for 62.2 percent of the browser market in January this year.

Windows 7 users offered anti-piracy update – Microsoft has started offering Windows 7 users an update to the company's anti-piracy software via Windows Update. The update to Windows Activation Technologies (WAT), the anti-counterfeit program formerly known as Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), has been slammed by critics, including the internet advocate who criticized Microsoft in 2006 over the daily 'phone home' habits of WGA running on Windows XP. When Microsoft announced the WAT update on February 11, it said the revision was necessary to detect more than 70 'activation exploits', Microsoft's term for what others call 'cracks' that sidestep the product activation process or use stolen keys to illegally activate counterfeit copies of Windows 7.At the time, Microsoft also revealed that the updated WAT would periodically 'phone home' to Microsoft's servers to re-validate the copy of Windows 7 as legitimate, as well as use those opportunities to update activation signatures to detect newer cracks.

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