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Microsoft's IE7 Search Box Bugs Google
tessaiga writes "The New York Times reports that Google is crying foul over a new IE7 search box feature that defaults to MSN Search. Although the feature can be modified to use Google or other search engines, Google asserts that "The best way to handle the search box [...] would be to give users a choice when they first start up Internet Explorer 7." Google goes on to assert that the move "limits consumer choice and is reminiscent of the tactics that got Microsoft into antitrust trouble in the late 1990s". I notice that in my version of Firefox the search box defaults to Google, and that the pulldown menu of pre-entered options doesn't even include MSN Search, but Google seems to have been oddly quiet on that front for the many years prior to IE7 that Firefox has made this feature available."
Google should auto-magically have a script that makes it the default search engine when an Internet Explorer user visits http://www.google.com/ to make a search.
In keeping with "knowing your enemy", I installed IE7, and it crashes consistently every time I open up a new page in a new tab.
It is a microsoft beta software. What else do u expect. Just be happy that it only crashed, instead of killing your family and burning down your house
Firefox, Opera and Safari together have at a minimum 10% of the market, and by some estimates probably have at least more realistically around 15-20% now. Have you forgotten that Microsoft ceded the entire Mac browser market to Apple? Every desktop Linux installation is in a similar situation.
Yes, that's such a monopoly. There's no viable competition since the competition only has a low double digit marketshare as opposed to 50% or more!
Why aren't you bitching about Google trying to buy its way into the same monopoly that you allege Microsoft to have? Don't you think it's "bad for competition" that people are "forced" to use Google by default in Firefox and Opera? Oh the horror, people might have to learn how to switch their default search engine!
I don't know where you got your information. My copy of IE7 came with: MSN, Yahoo, Google, and Ebay. I quickly switched from MSN to Google in about 3 seconds. Then I remembered I was running IE7 and promptly switched back to Firefox.
it crashes consistently
Oh, that feature's been in there at least since 4.0!
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