Ryan Gavin the General Manager for Internet Explorer Business and Marketing shared their plan to push latest and greatest version of IE to Windows consumers automatically.

He said that they will start upgrading older Internet Explorer to newer version on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 via Windows Update in January 2012.

“We want to make updating to the best protection possible as fast and simple as we can for Windows customers. IE is how millions of Windows customers connect to the Web, so keeping that part of Windows updated at all times is critical to keeping them safe online. With automatic updates enabled through Windows Update, customers can receive IE9 and future versions of Internet Explorer seamlessly without any “update fatigue” issues,” added Ryan Gavin.

As per a web developer point-of-view, I love to see more-and-more users using newer version of Internet Explorer.

Though it is not a must automatic upgrades of IE and administrators, enterprise installations or end-users can use Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits prevent automatic upgrades of IE. Alternatively can disable Automatic Updates as well.

Source: Internet Explorer Blog