Google phases out IE6 support for Docs and Sites

Forces browser update.

Google has urged users to update their browsers to avoid losing access to new features in Google Docs and Google Sites.

The search giant said that new features to be introduced at the beginning of March will not be available to users running old browsers, and that some features may even stop working altogether. Google promised not to deny users access outright to the applications.

The latest editions of the most popular web browsers include Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8.0, Mozilla's Firefox 3.6, Google's Chrome 5.0 and Apple's Safari 4.0.

"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," said Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth in the Google Docs blog.

Google released the latest version of Chrome last week for developers to test.

Google Docs is an office suite for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, while Google Sites allows users to build their own web sites from scratch.