No, I think they're doing the right thing here. A firm hand on the backs of people who would otherwise never upgrade, not a punch in the face. Frankly, I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of people in Redmond that secretly approve this move. Microsoft has to play the role of stabilizer for their enterprise customers (so therefore updates are optional), but I'm certain that they wish their home users could play with the "new fast native Internet."
> Frankly, I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of people in Redmond that secretly approve this move.
It is no secret. MS themselves have gone as far as putting up "anti"-IE6 sites and not supporting IE6 in their own online office apps. IE7 can't be far behind. IE prior to version 9 is an embarrassment to them compared to IE9 and versions of other browsers from three (or more) years ago and they'd like to sweep them under the carpet and get users running IE9+ ASAP.
MS will draw the line at IE8 which Google (and anyone following a similar pattern) may not (they may drop IE8 support soon after IE10 is released if sticking with a "current and previous only" model), as MS won't want to lock off XP+IE8 users (at least until April 2014 when XP with SP3 completely falls out of extended support anyway) because that might further encourage shifting to Firefox or Chrom{e|ium} as an upgrade to IE9 is not possible on XP.
