Yahoo Pushing IE7 On Firefox Users 300
El Lobo writes "Looks like things are heating up again in the browser wars. Google has been openly supporting Firefox, so now Yahoo is displaying a new feature on search results pages for FireFox users. It appears that Yahoo is pushing downloads of IE7 from Microsoft and including itself as the default search engine installed in the file menu area." I got the invitation to download IE7 when running Firefox on a Mac, and even when running IE5 under CrossOver; but not when running IE7 under Parallels.
Fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing different from this "Firefox protects you" official Google site: http://www.google.com/firefox [google.com]
Fair enough. Nothing to see here, folks [bg]
Re:Fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I can understand the advantages and disadvantages of Firefox and IE, but annoying me by acting like a jackass isn't the way to convince me to switch.
I will say, after trying IE7 under Vista at work, trying Firefox 2.0, having issues with IE6 remembering my settings and finding out about IETab [mozdev.org], the switch was an easy decision for me. Pundit asshattery hurt rather than helped the situation.
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That said, I'm still a bit miffed that Mozilla hasn't remedied their JavaScript issues
Re:Fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I hit one page looking for a free/open source application (wish I could remember which one it was) and was greeted with a large banner at the top and an audio recording saying my computer was "infected" with internet explorer and I should switch to Firefox to remedy it.
Now I can understand the advantages and disadvantages of Firefox and IE, but annoying me by acting like a jackass isn't the way to convince me to switch.
After years of us, users of alternative browsers (opera, netscape 4, etc.), we've been fed up by litteraly thousands of "I don't care if it displays badly on your monitor because only IE matters" sites, you find offensive that a correctly designed site reminds you in a mild way that your attitude (among millions of "I pee on W3C standards" like you) has and will harm you ? Now that you're eating your own food, that sounds seriously funny. But I must admit a wave sound is a bit too much ; personaly, I validate my pages and make a warning that my site won't support any broken browser. This links to a list of good browsers, and IE isn't in it, full stop.
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Do you consider it a strength that you are too lazy to code to standards and work around flaws in the most popular browser?
That's two questions wrapped in a single bias, really. I don't consider myself being too lazy for coding to standards. It's time consuming, and doesn't display an enormous difference with a more lax coding. So, it's overall more efforts. Especially when you stick to -strict DTDs as I do.
On the other hand, "work around flaws in the most popular browser" isn't only about lazyness ; I
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While this is hardly a good excuse, the fact that IE exists means that web technology is at about the year 2000. Anything developed since then is useless to us because IE does not support it. There are also many other cool technologies that we would love to use (like MathML) but can't because IE doesn't support it.
As for IE, there's no excuse for its utter crappiness. It's not like Microsoft is a poor, tiny software company. So sometimes web develop
Search-Market Consolidation and Free Market (Score:5, Interesting)
The same happened in the market for 0x86 processors. The market once had numerous strong competitors: AMD, Nexgen, Cyrix, Centaur, and Intel. Now, there are only 2 major players: AMD and Intel.
The search market is facing a similar consolidation -- in 2 phases. The market once had numerous strong competitors: Microsoft, Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc. After the first phase of consolidation, there are 3 major players: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. Now, the market is entering the second phase of consolidation. Like the personal computer, the search tool is a commodity product with almost no product differentiation. A search on Yahoo works just like a search on Microsoft Live. Why do we need 3 essentially identical products on the market?
The market appears to be consolidating into (1) Google being the major player and (2) the merger of Microsoft and Yahoo being the minor player. The recent loss of search market share from Yahoo to Google is also nudging Yahoo into being acquired by Microsoft.
Yahoo is leaning in that direction by giving preference to IE7.
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When a market reaches maturity, the numerous competing firms consolidate into a small number of major competitors. Consider the personal-computer market. It once had numerous strong competitors: AST, Gateway, Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, etc. Now, there are only a few major players: HP, Dell, and Lenovo.
And hundreds of thousands of generic small-medium shops. And Acer, Asus, LG, Toshiba...
The same happened in the market for 0x86 processors. The market once had numerous strong competitors: AMD, Nexgen, Cyrix, Centaur, and Intel. Now, there are only 2 major players: AMD and Intel.
Actually, Intel had been the only serious player up until quite recently. The addition of AMD is an increase in competition.
The search market is facing a similar consolidation -- in 2 phases. The market once had numerous strong competitors: Microsoft, Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc. After the first phase of consolidation, there are 3 major players: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. Now, the market is entering the second phase of consolidation. Like the personal computer, the search tool is a commodity product with almost no product differentiation. A search on Yahoo works just like a search on Microsoft Live. Why do we need 3 essentially identical products on the market?
Your history is a bit off. There were several competing search engines (Yahoo, Altavista, Webcrawler, Lycos, Infoseek). We needed a bunch, because there wasn't a single one that could be used reliably. Then there was Google, who could provide comprehensive results, and is the only serious player n
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Heh. The next software war is going to be in virtual reality on highspeed data networks. Snow Crash, here we come!
A bit more than preference (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)
But I would say that in the so called browser wars the government has largely failed at performing their role in limiting Microsofts abuse of their operating system monopoly in achieving a monopoly position in another market. It is not illegal to have a monopoly, it is just illegal to abuse it.
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You know, I always have problems with people that begin their argument with "the fact that." Most of the time these "facts" turn out to be opinions.
That aside, why is it that everyone makes such a big freakin' deal about what browser Joe Customer uses? The argument I see most posted goes something like this:
Microsoft has forced too many users to IE! They're anti-competitive--leaving no room for alternatives! Too many people use IE! Don't they know tha
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In this case, a federal court that ruled that it was a fact that MS abused its monopoly position.
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It's really not that complicated:
1) When the dominate browser is the least standards-compliant, and actually pushes proprietary features instead of their standards-compliant equivalents, it encourages a proprietary web and is detrimental to everyone else not on the proprietary platform. It is also detrimental to those ON the proprietary platform, because their costs are kept in-check by competiti
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I do think it's rather silly though, that they bother showing the advertisement to users who can't run IE7 anyway because it won't run on their operating system.
Don't use Yahoo. (Score:2)
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That page is default start page for Firefox, not an ad. You have to already be using the browser to get there, unless you go out of your way to browse to the Firefox start page...
Re:Fair enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a point, but you're making it poorly.
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BSD is the base that Apple's OSX is built upon, among MANY other successful BSD derivatives, so I am not speaking without knowledge here.
BSD is the base that was copied to form much of the software that the FSF has. GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix!" which is recursive, and an "inside joke."
Basically the way it was described to me best was that Linux (not the kernel but the userspace more than anything) emulates and copies Unix, and BSD
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BSD is the base that was copied to form much of the software that the FSF has. GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix!" which is recursive, and an "inside joke."
Basically the way it was described to me best was that Linux (not the kernel but the userspace more than anything) emulates and copies Unix, and BSD.
Think about it this way - car manufacturers often copy other models and features. Some are better, some are worse.
When you say Linux (not the kernel but the userspace more than anything) , you obviously mean "GNU". Just wanted to clarify that, you missed it by so little that I wanted to make it clear for casual readers that don't understand the difference between GNU and Linux .
The whole idea of GNU was really to copy Unix, and make it free, you are correct.
BSD has other (different, not better, not worse) freedoms than the GPL (which is associated most with Linux). There is the freedom to go proprietary, which many exercise. There is the freedom to interface much proprietary software with it.
The way I see it, BSD is about giving the most reasonable freedom possible to the developer.
A developer is free to do mostly whatever he wants, with BSD.
With the
Re:Fair enough (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that the Linux side of things should *REALLY* start to emphasize binary compatible trees at the kernel level, as I honestly get tired of having to update drivers every kernel update... Sometimes things break when this happens.. far less likely with BSD over Linux.
Emerge which is Gentoo's claim to fame is modelled after the BSD ports system, which has been around far longer. BSD's binary package system has been around longer than apt, yum, or other linux distribution systems is stable, and consistant.
The down side is BSD hasn't reached any critical mass. The FreeBSD, and I would assume the OpenBSD installers are a painful experience getting a system setup, especially getting software raid working (though I prefer hardware). Driver support is limited, and most new drivers are ports of linux drivers, however the support layer is pretty good. There is also a linux compatability layer which will allow for most linux binaries to run.
For the desktop side, PC-BSD [pcbsd.org] has made huge strides, it's very easy to get installed, and use... there are a few other desktop oriented versions, but imho this is the best. It's installer is based in QT and is basically a FreeBSD 6.x install with X-Windows, and KDE installed an preconfigured, there are also some extra configuration utilities that are enhanced, in addition to some custom utils.
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The "development branch", the "alpha", the "beta" and the "release candidate" don't count. If you want to compare development branches, Opera [opera.com], Konqueror [kde.org], and Safari make Firefox look even more pathetic.
Re:Fair enough (Score:5, Interesting)
For Windows? (Score:2)
Which, as I understand it, do not run on the operating system shipped on the vast majority of PCs.
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It would be nice to see Konqueror's browser engine ported to a usable browser for Windows, for at least testing... I finally got around (today) to tweaking my hobby website for non-windows users, given that pt sizes are d
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Re:Fair enough (Score:5, Interesting)
See here is again is what people don't get...
One of the reasons IE became as popular as it did is that it didn't 'fail' when pages were formatted improperly or 'downloaded' improperly (remember dial up?)
In the 4.x browser war days there were a couple of things that MADE people prefer IE or Netscape. One of them was the fact that a missing tag at the end of a table wouldn't cause the page to not display AT ALL as it did in Netscape, so even if the page was messed up, IE would try to render it based on the information it had.
Now a lot of people see this as a flaw, but if you look at the technology it is actually a 'smart' feature that the browser would at the very least display a page even if it wasn't formed properly. Call it a form of programming 'intelligence'.
This is NO different than the CSS failures of IE and Firefox of today. They support 'legacy' tags that both browsers used and are not 'compliant', and they also will try to render page parts even if the tags and improperly formed. THIS IS WHY neither will ever fully pass all the CSS page tests on the web like ACID2, as they don't test for ability, but they MAINLY test for a browser's INABILITY to handle bad data and the developers expect the browser to NOT display the improperly formed tags.
This is really an argument that can go either way, as I see benefits in 'forcing' compliance, but I also understand that some sites are old and their data would be inaccessible or lost if every browser only conformed to strict CSS and ignored legacy tags or malformed tags. This is where I go, well it isn't hurting anyone for the browsers to be a bit smarter than the site developers.
Also everyone applauds Safari for being strict CSS, but the side note in this story is Safari also doesn't have to have any intelligence built in, nor does it worry about or handle old tags or malformed pages, they all become 'unworthy' and Safari isn't 'smart' enough to render them.
As for the browser wars of 4.x, there were a couple of other reasons IE was prefered over Netscape. Like the page refreshing when it was resized on Netscape or raw display performance.
In the end, I would pick Firefox or IE7 and their 'flaws', legacy support, and ability to render malformed pages over Safari any day. Web developers tend to suck in general and I would rather have some intelligence in my browser to help counteract crap pages, even if it means the browser will fail CSS standards.
However if you are web developer, just design the page with proper standards, watch for IE7 and not assume it renders like IE6 which sucked on several CSS abilities. Then just go for standards. PS the above posts are correct - TEST IN EVERY browser you can get your hands on, there are like 5 major browser players, it is not hard to do.
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This actually brings up a point against your whole argument.
I mostly develop under Firefox, and I develop with XHTML. This is because if I forget a closing tag, Firefox will tell me about it. It won't just make the page look uglier, it'll tell me I have a problem. I also use the Web Development Toolbar, which tells
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I don't totally disagree with you, but here is where we are all focusing on the wrong end of this situation.
It should NOT be the browser's
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This isn't a browser's responsibility, this is the design package's responsibility. We are past the days of people using notepad for major sites, so we also should be past the days of relying on the browser to tell us what we messed up.
Sadly, one of
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Doomed to fail (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody's using Yahoo for search, including people who work at Yahoo.
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It's not about search... (Score:2, Interesting)
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I've found that the search-engine bar on firefox has actually encouraged me to use yahoo (and other search engines) because it makes it so easy, I type the search terms in once and then just pick different search engines from the drop down menu. It is just as easy as going to multiple pages of results from a single engine.
FWIW, in my searches for hi-rez CD cover art, yahoo image search was often a better tool than google.
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the only issue. Another issue is that IE has the bulk of the market share, especially among non-tech-savvy users. This means web developers always have to consider how IE behaves on their sites, even if the behavior is clearly a bug in IE. For years, this has stalled progress on the web, because Microsoft would not support certain features in IE, making it unattractive for web designers and developers to use them.
The growing market share of Firefox has led more sites to include certain niceties, even if they didn't actually work well or at all in IE. This has increased the attractiveness of Firefox, as well as compelled Microsoft to improve their browser.
Arguably, it would be a Bad Thing if this development were stopped just now it's starting to yield fruit. Competition between web browsers is good, it leads to better browsers and better sites.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Of course if the CSS hack wasnt widespread, there wouldnt be much gain from eliminating the advertising...
Yahoo? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yahoo? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yahoo? (Score:5, Funny)
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And it didn't come anywhere in the Top 40 either, pop music fans. Oh dear.
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Well, at least the people who run Yahoo's search engine are honest. If it were me, I'd look for strings like that and return 'Yahoo.'
Detailed analysis follows. (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Seriously. So yahoo got a truckload of cash from Microsoft. Who can blame them? Not I, posting from Firefox 2.
Not "pushing" until they block your user agent.. (Score:5, Insightful)
My school started doing this last year.. I navigated to their registration site with safari and got a nice little "we won't let you go to this site with your browser of choice" message..
I promptly enabled the debug menu and chose MSIE6 as my user agent.. it then let me in and I had absolutely no problems doing what I wanted to do.
Now this may become a much more sticky problem when they start taking advantage of the "remote attestation" in treacherous computing to prevent you from lying to the servers of anticompetitive schticks like this school of mine.
Re:Not "pushing" until they block your user agent. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not "pushing" until they block your user agent. (Score:2)
Of more concern to me is the actions of my local TV news station. In the past they offered video feeds in Real format. Real works on all platforms and with all browsers as far as I know. However, they recently switched to some new propri
Re:Not "pushing" until they block your user agent. (Score:2)
'Targeting Firefox Users'? (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't really shocking or terrible or anything, as it seems like Yahoo has a branded download of IE ("IE7 Optimized for Yahoo" is visible in one of the screenshots) and doesn't have a branded version of the other browsers. Does it really matter what browser they advertise?
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Safari and Opera: not a target (Score:2)
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I don't see a problem either... and I definitely don't see that ad targeted at Firefox users.
Or Opera users, for that matter.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we been able to search directly from our browsers for quite some time now?
From all I can see, Yahoo is targeting IE6- users.
You know, the ones still using Yahoo. </troll> ;)
What's the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get it (Score:2)
I just tried Yahoo Search. I haven't seen the ad for IEv7 in half a dozen different searches (using Firefox v2.0 as my browser).
Could this be because I have already installed IEv7? Or because I was using FF v2.0 and therefore not a likely candidate for upgrading?
In any event, I favor anything that would encourage people to migrate from IEv6 to something that was more secure and complied better with web standards, even IEv7. We'll all be better off for that.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's pushing IE, then websites should feel free to continue pushing things in that manner. It's the most unobtrusive ad I've ever seen. I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out to me.
This is a nonstory.
"Pushing" it to Mac users too... (Score:2)
malware evolution (Score:2)
Hardly pushing (Score:4, Insightful)
Pushing would be forcing you to install IE7 to use yahoo.
Now that's a nice idea... (Score:2)
... we've just been thinking of some way to decrease our market share some more.
Sincerely,
Yahoo!
Oh the humanity (Score:5, Funny)
What to chose? Hmmm... What to chose?
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Yahoo and Internet Explorer 7: 9,170,000 results [yahoo.com]
Google and Firefox 2: 26,500,000 results [yahoo.com]
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Yahoo for webmail, Google for searches, and Opera for browsing.
ads? too many (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare that to google with it's adsense ads. Small, unobtrusive, text ads....
Whether Yahoo prefers IE or not [btw the BETA client works just fine in Seamonkey..] is moot compared to the horrible placement of all the ads...
Tom
Be independent. (Score:4, Funny)
yahoo pushing firefox - no really (Score:4, Interesting)
"Use Yahoo! to search from Firefox
Just select "Yahoo!" from the search box drop-down menu in your browser"
screenshot [flickr.com]
So Yahoo seems to be advertising its own search service more than anything else. Huh...who'd have though a search company advertising their own search service - the horror. They are hardly pushing it - that'd be forcing you to download IE7 with the yahoo toolbar bundled and blocking dedicated FF+typically Google users like me.
Utter bs. Must be a slow news day.
who cares (Score:2)
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28% [informationweek.com] of the market uses Yahoo.
i.e. The number of people using Yahoo to search is more than the number of people using Firefox to browse.
huh! (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasted ad if they don't check the OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Who? (Score:2, Funny)
Yahoo never gets it! (Score:2)
No wonder they (Yahoo) are a struggling company by some measures these days. It does not have to be that way. It's because of this reason that it is my mission to avoid Yahoo services as much as possible.
The pushing of Internet Explorer 7 is yet another arrogant and bigoted notion that tends to lean on the premise that all internet u
Pushing users off (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just that they're pushing ie7. It's that they are becoming too microsoft-flash-ajax centric, especially for people with older computers and slow connections (yes, not everyone can afford broadband/new computers). Yahoo doesn't really care about these users, I guess because they are not the ones they want to market to. But I do have a broadband connection and Yahoo's TV listings load horribly now (they just changed them to an ajax layout).
Yahoo is really taking steps backwards, not forwards. I hope that their deal with Microsoft was worth it, because they are losing people heading to their website.
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People see what they want to see, I guess... Yes, Yahoo! does tend towards flashy / cool, but do me a favor and surf on over there with images off / css off / flashblock, etc and tell me what you see.
(go ahead, I'll wait)
If that's the web you want then get cracking and "make it so", it's not that hard. See what it's like to surf with a screenreader or keyboard only. (here's a search for you: accessibility on developer.yahoo.com [google.com])
They can push (Score:2)
Yahoo is only used for weather pages, way too noisy... and -
W2K can't run IE7, not to speak about the "Advantage" thingie....
What is the Problem? (Score:2)
It seems to have stopped maybe (Score:2)
However, I did notice it doing that every time I accessed Yahoo using Firefox. I waited until I saw their actual advertisement version, clicked the "Ad Feedback" button, and told them what I thought about being asked to switch browsers.
I think it's a good thing to show the ad to IE 6- users on Windows, but it doesn't make sense anywhere else.
Yahoo! is useless (Score:2)
That is all.
Repositories (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Until MS makes it a necessary component, so what (Score:2)
FF 2.0 - Check
Thunderbird - Check
Zone Alarm - Check
Avast AV - Check
Ad-Aware - Check
Spybot - Check
CCleaner - Check
Registry Mechanic - Check
ERUNT - Check
Winamp - Check
So given that I have XpHomeSP2 + current patches, MS Office 2003 + current patches & I use non MS for everthing else, then why am I worried? When MS makes it a hard requirement to run my current OS then I'll worry.
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VIDEO IS SPAM (Score:2)
Re:Image search as well (Score:4, Funny)
Do we want a 3D goatse?
Now excuse me, I have to go and rinse my eyes with some acid.
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OK I am going to burn some Karma and not post AC - but how is this off topic? It is a /. story about yahoo pushing IE7 and someone notes that some of Yahoo's games do not work on FF. If Yahoo is writing games that work only with IE7 then this is another reason that Yahoo might be pushing IE7. Whomever moded this 'offtopic' needs glasses - as they hit the wrong button - or needs to not have mod points.
For the record I am
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