Why do ie versions coexist in parallel?

Question

I mean, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, and basically every browser instead of IE has a single 'last build' version which can be updated-to from the browser itself, why does IE need to have IE6, IE7, IE8 coexisting, instead of providing an updater so everyone uses the same version (ideally IE8), which doesn't have as many problems as for instance IE6

Answer 1

Because IE isn't just a webbrowser, it is also a platform that many line of business apps are built on. If Microsoft AutoUpdated all of them, there is large potential for breakage and much corporate expense.

Answer 2

I don't think IE is at all different from the other browsers in this respect.

None of them force you to upgrade to the latest version, and some people do run older versions of all the other browsers.

IE is used a bit more by the less-technical world and is a bit more likely to be extremely out of date, but it's not because of any different version coexistence policy. It's a social issue driven by the business and user communities, not a technical one.

I do wish more people would catch up and just throw IE6 away though.