PushUpTheWeb: Who Am I To Tell My Readers They Should Upgrade Their Browsers?

Dion Alamaer over at Ajaxian reports about a new service that is intended for any website owner to be able to detect the browser version of any visitor and suggest an upgrade if needed. PushUpTheWeb (that's the name of the service) is self-described by its creator as an "effort to push the web forward by helping users update their outdated browsers". The service is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Basically, when a user visits a site that has PushUpTheWeb script installed, he is prompted to upgrade to the latest version with a link that will take the user to the upgrade page for the respective browser (or the user can choose to be reminded later). As of this writing the service is used on 9 domains known to its creator (the site chose to report this right on the homepage) and invites other sites as well, obviously.

I do not see any business model behind the service now - this is the relatively rare case when a web 2.0 product can't even be monetized with ads (unless they choose to add advertising to the "subtle" link prompting for the upgrade - which sounds too bad to ever become reality). The only thing the company can rely on is donations from webmasters who choose to install it.

But I definitely see a number of problems for the service ever to be able to gain adoption on any significant number of websites. My concerns are about how our readers will feel about these reminders without any possibility to opt out. I am sure our readers will be hugely disappointed and this is probably true for many other publishers as well.

First of all, some people tend to stick to their older browser versions for a reason of their own - and here I don't even give them a chance to say: "Thank you, I am aware I am on an old browser but I actually want to keep it this way."

Another thing is that blog readers and users of a huge number of web applications are already often annoyed by the ads we push into their faces right when they enter (and no, I won't go again into the compensation for blog owners topic). So I can only imagine that using this browser upgrade reminder in addition to ads will annoy users even further - and may even raise serious privacy concerns from users.

And the final concern is about why would any webmaster or, say, blog owner want to install this script at all? The only niche audience I see are software manufacturers that may need to make their potential users upgrade their browser before they will be able to use the product itself. But this does not look like a huge audience to me. The rest of us are supposed to do it out of general good will to help more internet users migrate to a newer browser. But why should I care about what my visitors use to browse the web if they choose to stop by here? I am invariably thankful for them coming at first place and I don't care if they are on a new browser or an old one or if they access Profy from 5-years-old desktop PC or a fancy new MacBook Pro. I am happy they (you) stop by and by no means I am going to irritate them if I can avoid that.