Short answer: no.

Long answer: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Okay, I stole that one from Yahtzee. Anyway, I doubt this plugin will change much to a situation that Microsoft can't change even if they want to.

The reason for this is pretty simple. The people still using IE6 each belong to one of these categories:

  1. Web-illiterate users. Most of these don't know what HTML is. They don't know what they're missing out. They don't know how huge the Web is. All they know is that some program allows them to send mails and watch videos. It's not that they're dumb or anything : they just don't care.
  2. Conservatives. "If it ain't broken, don't fix it". Some nearly belong to the former category as well. The tools they use to browse the Internet answer their needs. Why would they change? After all, the Web is not broken at all, from their point of view.
  3. Workers. This is probably the largest category. They might know that there's another browser. Maybe they even use it at home. The thing is that they can't install anything else: either they don't have admin privileges, or they do but they aren't allowed to use them to install whatever they want on a computer that belongs to their employer. Hell, maybe they even run Win2k: neither IE7 nor Chrome can be installed on that OS.

From the Web userbase, all we're left with is (possibly moderate) enthusiasts. They know that there are other browsers, and they use them. At best, they see this as a cool trick, but they don't need it since they already have another browser: it's just like that oh-so-shiny gadget they won at the fair two years ago, only to throw it away two weeks later when it had ceased to be of any interest to them.

Also, since Microsoft has advised against using Chrome Frame, some people will rather not install the plugin and will probably stay away from Chrome altogether.

In conclusion, with noone to install and keep using this more than a few days, the middle-term result of this release in terms of Web standards compliance will be insignificant. A bit reminiscent of Google Chrome's launch, really.

Note: I intentionally left out IE7 and IE8 from this comment. This is because I think they don't require much more work to be supported: IE7 was a huge improvement and IE8 passes ACID2.

Since neither CSS3 nor HTML5 are standardized yet, I don't see any reason to complain about a lack of support in IE. Sure, I miss rounded corners, but until recently, Gecko and Webkit had different interpretation of the property.