Even though we firmly believe IE6 must die, it’s not going away any time soon. Now, however, Google has come up with a creative way to improve the experience of Internet Explorer users, without making them actually upgrade or switch to another browser.

The company has launched Google Chrome Frame, which is a plugin for IE that “seamlessly brings Google Chrome’s (Google Chrome) open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer).” In other words, it’s all the behind the scenes features that make Chrome (Chrome) fast and allow it to support modern browser features, but within the IE interface.

Google (Google) explains Chrome Frame as mostly a developer-centric project:

“We’re building Google Chrome Frame to help web developers deliver faster, richer applications like Google Wave (Google Wave). Recent JavaScript performance improvements and the emergence of HTML5 have enabled web applications to do things that could previously only be done by desktop software. One challenge developers face in using these new technologies is that they are not yet supported by Internet Explorer. Developers can’t afford to ignore IE — most people use some version of IE — so they end up spending lots of time implementing work-arounds or limiting the functionality of their apps.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t ultimately solve the problem for developers, because most IE users presumably won’t install Chrome Frame, meaning IE6 will still need to be supported (or they could join this coalition). Nonetheless, it will expose some new users to Chrome, potentially accelerate the demise of IE6, and not-so-subtly attack Microsoft in the process.