Companies with these locked down Win2K/XP/ie6 desktops wouldn't install that, because that would be work, which costs money. If they saw ie6 as a problem and were willing to put in any effort whatsoever to fix it, they would have done so long ago.
I consulted for a company which had well over 10K managed desktops with XP/IE6. They are in the process of upgrading to IE8 and would be delighted if they could just install it in place of IE6 and go on with life. However, the upgrade team identified well over 70 internal apps, some written in-house and some vendor-provided, which required IE6 to function properly. Some suitable strategy must be identified for each: fix, replace, decommission, etc. If they could install a standalone version of IE6 just for these apps, they could upgrade to IE8 now and fix them over time.
To those who know something about IE6's "architecture": How hard is such an idea given that you are Microsoft? What if the standalone app could be constrained to work only with known-safe websites so that security upgrades were not so essential?
If you were Microsoft, it would be trivial, provided you hadn't based your legal anti-trust defence on saying this was impossible. If you had, for example, done that, then it's obviously 'impossible'. Also, their revenue model only works if they can keep selling you upgrades all the time - no profit in fixing the old shit.
There a lots of pieces of 3rd party software that mess around with IE in ways that MS have claimed are not possible and go part of the way towards what you want:
Once you can run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, and you're controlling which browsers are installed, redirecting traffic to one or the other is just matter of a simple browser plugin on both that has a black/whitelist and redirects to the appropriate browser. Done. Ms could get an intern to code this up, if they actually wanted to.
I had not considered Microsoft's legal need for consistency with statements made in past anti-trust cases. Was the company's argument that IE was not extricable from Windows or that Windows could not function without a tightly-integrated browser? I had thought the argument was the latter, and, if so, I don't see why Microsoft could not provide IE6 as a stand-alone browser while leaving IE8/9/whatever tightly integrated with the OS.
"Also, their revenue model only works if they can keep selling you upgrades all the time"
I think the need for IE6 hurts the velocity of Windows 7 upgrades, especially for large accounts.
It doesn't seem to be hurting them that much, profits wise - and certainly not enough for them to attempt to do anything about it, apparently.
During the trial, I think they argued both of the above, amongst other things. However, I'm fairly sure that's water under the bridge at this point. I would assume it's just not judged cost effective to work on decade old junk, nor to give it credence or attention by doing so.
"If they saw ie6 as a problem and were willing to put in any effort whatsoever to fix it"
They are now atoning for past sins. I don't think they understood what a pickle they were getting themselves into a few years ago by saying, "Our in-house apps target IE6, our corporate standard browser". Also, they have vendor contracts which do not state, "We guarantee isolated product upgrades to support Microsoft's current browser" or similar. This isn't to say that they shouldn't have been more forward looking -- it's just the reality of the situation.
