Microsoft's (News - Alert) “Windows Blog” just released a report that proudly announces the death of Internet Explorer 6 usage in the USA. United States IE6 usage is now below one percent. The report uses Net Applications, a company that collects data about Internet browser usage, as a source. A website known as the “Official Internet Explorer 6 Countdown” site also pegs IE6 usage in the United States at a value of 0.9 percent.

Worldwide, IE6 is still used rather frequently, hitting a value of 7.7 percent. China is the champion of IE6 usage, where just above 25 percent of the population still uses the dinosaur-era browser. South Korea barely touches that number, scoring second place at 7.2 percent. Japan, surprisingly, still has many IE6 users, settling for third place at 5.9 percent.

Microsoft has established a “Champion's Circle” that lists every country that has reached below the one percent mark. The countries include Portugal, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Poland, Philippines, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Austria.

Developers throughout the United States are surely very glad they don't have to overcompensate for old versions of browsers in their websites, although more than two million people in the USA still use the old browser. That is simply an estimation based on a percentage grabbed from the official figure for total Internet users in the USA (cca. 245 million).

Microsoft did not only take pride in the fact that more people are possibly switching to newer IE versions, but the company also has another reason to whip out the champagne: Windows 7 experienced a 13 percent growth since February last year.

As far as commercial operating systems are concerned, Windows 7 has a 37 percent market share, a considerable piece of the pie. Windows XP, on the other hand, shrank by 11 percent in market share, Vista down to 8.4 percent, making it the most unpopular operating system version of the three. On April 8, 2014, Microsoft wants to pull the plug on support and updates for WinXP, forcing users who want IE9 to update to W7 or Vista.