Unfortunately this is an anti-feature: no one will choose a browser for himself b/c he wants it, and some ppl might avoid browsers with it.

I guess the only way it could be good for market share is I might want to install a browser like this for someone else, so they'll end up upgrading eventually even if I'm not around anymore. I'd be happy to mass install it at a big company if I could get away with it. Then even if I'm not there later, something good will happen.

I would love this as much as any other web designer or developer, but sadly, it's just not feasible.

The biggest problem with upgrades is that lots of companies rely on specific versions of specific browsers for in-house websites and web apps. Expiration dates essentially amount to browser makers saying 'too bad, fix your software'. This would be amusing, but realistically, Microsoft would never do such a thing, and without Microsoft on board, not much will change.

The best compromise I can think of is for browser vendors to decouple updates of web-technology support (HTML, CSS, JS, Canvas, etc.) from updates of user-facing features, the things that get advertised when an full point upgrade is released, and start pushing out HTML, CSS and JS upgrades automatically, in the background. Once the first round of such browsers were widely adopted, browser upgrades would cease to be an issue at all. Upgrade averse users could keep their old versions with familiar interfaces and still have cutting edge standards support.

This leaves the problem of getting the first round of upgrades through, but that could be solved by building in backwards compatibility for all currently popular version of a browser. This would be a pain, but would only have to happen once. If Microsoft, for example, gave IE9 full backwards compatibility with IE8, 7 and 6, and made future rendering updates automatic, there would be very little excuse left for any company to stick with an older version of IE.

This is why Chrome has built-in silent autoupdate - the vast majority of our users are on the a new version within a week of releasing it.

See graphs: http://www.belshe.com/test/velocity2010/#slide38.0

The shallow curve is our development and beta channel users, the steep part of the curve is when we release a stable version. Previous slides show known update rates for other browsers.

Shouldn't all software have a clearly labelled expiration date like dairy products do?

You know, we effectively had this back in 1995 or 1996 when Netscape would release betas. Each version would expire and require you to upgrade a few months afterwards. The Web was very different back then, but I think that this could possibly work for browsers like Safari where there aren't a bunch of folks with plugins. But breaking my favorite Firefox plug because the plugin creator was on vacation for six months and missed a browser upgrade would be not so cool.

Many corporate IT departments run old browsers because they make use of proprietary intranet web applications and don't feel like developing them on multiple platforms. To them, this system would seem pretty stupid, and indeed, would prevent them from ever upgrading into new expiring browser versions.

It wouldn't bode well for public relations between the browser designer and the user. I see the reasoning this guy has, but this proposal is literally planned obsolescence. That's a scary notion to a user (or consumer).

Could the big browser makers all agree to set expiration dates on all their browsers?

They could! It'd be as much a runaway success as software expiration was for eradicating piracy, and I doubt anyone is competent enough to roll out cracks or patches to "fix" people's broken browsers.

I prefer silent updates.

How do you download a new browser when your old one is expired?

The issue is that doing this is forcing the issues of a few people on to a much larger set. If someone doesn't want to write code for that browser just don't. If they're feeling really nice, pop an error message telling them that their browser is expired.

Oh, whats that? now the site isn't going to bring in as much revenue? Now they have a choice, whether the revenue is worth more to them than writing the code.

This would have a huge impact on overall security: How many spammers and other vermin rely on the fact IE6's vulnerabilities are still so common? Forcing browsers off the web before they get to be that much of a problem would force them to work harder and might even make it unprofitable for some of them to continue.

silly idea