"As we’ve mentioned previously, one of our main missions here on the IE team at Microsoft is to get people off of IE6 and onto a later version of IE as fast as humanly possible." and "Though while we’re in beta we aren’t recommending IE9 deployment to a production environment just yet, we’re excited about IE9 excitement and IE8 momentum in the commercial space. Stay posted for more commercial updates as we approach the next milestone for IE9."
The way I see it: The problem is that IE9 does not support Windows XP which still has about a 60% market share. In the long term XP users may find that Firefox or Chrome is more attractive than sticking with IE6 or IE8.
Yes IE6 is doomed, but not necessarily by Microsoft. I have noticed over the last year or two more and more web sites have deliberately or for other reasons poisoned their web pages so that IE6 malfunctions to one degree or another. The intention by these web developers is the same as Microsoft, get people off of IE6.
While I agree that IE6 is yesterday, the mistake of not having IE9 support for Windows XP could well be a big mistake as once a user moves to another browser like Firefox for example, they tend to stick with it.
As for those of you who have a version of Windows that support IE9 and are thinking of giving it a tryout, don’t. It’s still a beta and you don’t need unwanted problems to start popping up on a computer that you depend on for every day use.
For XP users that are still using IE6 I suggest its time to go window shopping for a better browser. If you choose to give IE8 a spin download and install it separately from other Windows Updates. Once installed then run Windows Update to install any IE8 patches or security updates.