I suppose, given that Safari, while being an excellent browser, on Windows it is not such a great experience and just feels weird, it is reasonable to not list it as an upgrade option for IE6 users. By the nature of the situation, this only happens on Windows.

Huh? WebKit is a portable version of KHTML, with an abstraction layer to handle the QT dependencies. Most of the love would be aimed at the KDE developers.

I used the word love too actually. But I thought you meant thanks when you said it. I guess you didn't.

I meant self-serving strategery.

Safari is pointless on Windows.

It's an alternate browser that supports modern web standards. How is it any more 'pointless' than Firefox or Chrome?

It basically only exists for the sake of testing without buying a Mac. Since it pulls in an entire Cocoa/Carbon/whatever stack, it uses an intense amount of ram and performs slowly.

I'm not on Windows, so I haven't used it myself, but you're the first person I've heard complain about it since 4.0 dropped (though, granted, I don't listen very hard).

More important, I would think, is that it supports the web standards that Google has a vested interest in seeing flourish, and it would be another shiny logo that might get clicked rather than the IE7/8 link they put up out of necessity.

I use Safari on my Macbook and have it installed on my windows machine for testing.

- IE8 is there because it is a clear upgrade path

- FireFox is there because it has well known brand recognition

- Chrome is there because they want to push their own tech

What would Safari there gain? It would simply be one more choice. I think the three are already too many.

It's not targeted at real people who have to make a choice about which to download. It's been pretty well established that the only people still on IE6 are stuck behind IT policies that don't allow for upgrades. It's just a political statement, then, an attempt to drive home the point that IE6 is an ancient and decrepit bane on society and technology. The more sheer embarrassment that you can pile on top of these IT departments, the more frustration you ladle into the end users that they can direct into getting their company policies changed (rather than, hopefully, directed at you), the better. I think showing a wider variety of actually viable browsers makes that point better (hell, throw Opera in), because it makes it obvious just how far behind the rest of the world has left IE6.