By far some of the greatest news Microsoft has given us in a long time, being a Front End Developer by day I have to deal with IE ranging from 6 to 9, thankfully with this update we will hopefully see a decline of IE6 and IE7, and an incline of 8 and 9. Obviously we won’t see total extinction especially with enterprise/corporate control preventing these updates, but I’d rather one day we hit that low percentage of IE7 so that we can officially stop supporting it (I can dream right?).
Today we are sharing our plan to automatically upgrade Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PC. This is an important step in helping to move the Web forward. We will start in January for customers in Australia and Brazil who have turned on automatic updating via Windows Update. Similar to our release of IE9 earlier this year, we will take a measured approach, scaling up over time.
-Microsoft
Source: Windows Steam Blog
UPDATE: A good point has been raised by a fellow Front End Developer in that IE9 is quickly gaining speed, and now with this auto-update we will see IE9 on Windows 7 rise from 30% to probably 80% or more within mere months. Feel free to see these stats at Windows Stem Blog posted back in September.