Yahoo Pushing IE7 On Firefox Users

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.

Comments

Re:Yahoo?

[daeg]

Yes, Yahoo! actually used Google results up through the beginning of 2004. They dropped Google and went with a derivative of the Inktomi search engine which they had acquired through the beginning of 2003.

Re:Yahoo?

[Timesprout]

About 28% of Americans use it according to most market research.

Re:Fair enough

[dubonbacon]

Google are hosting the official firefox homepage and are the default search engine. They are paying Mozilla for this.

Re:Fair enough

[diegocgteleline.es]

I've never seen firefox advertising in google while I used it with IE. Just because they have a firefox-exclusive home page doesn't means they spam people to use firefox, like Yahoo is doing. Instead, they hire firefox developers and offer monetary incentives if a adsense user agrees to advertise firefox.

Pushing users off

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to set my family's computers homepage to yahoo. But they have since redone their TV listings so that they load like crap. Before that they made it so that many of their videos would only work with Window's media player.

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.

Re:Pushing users off

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer IIARNY (I am a relatively new yahoo)-

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) ... or on one of the A-Grade browsers (which is why the MS dig hurts).

Yeah, a lot of the new yahoo stuff feels maybe a bit too "Yahoo!-ey", and in some cases is a drag on performance for older computers (especially once you mix in the ads- performance == peanut butter). Sorry. A friend of mine recently made similar complaints re: the new TV site. It's a newly redesigned site. Kinks == Being Worked Out, I'm sure.

And I take specific offense to the "MS only" video playback. Check this out on linux w/ the flash9 beta (and relevant plugins). Or this video. It's not perfect because we can't devote a ton of resources to it, and a lot of our content comes from 3rd party providers (pre-encoded, if I understand correctly) so there are limits, but we all do what we can do with the time we have while keeping the feature-monsters satisfied.

I have to agree though, about Yahoo! sometimes putting the cart before the horse. I'm not a big fan of the new Yahoo! Mail interface, and dread the day that becomes default. Similar complaints came from the financial message boards people (they made it more like slashdot and people complained... go figure :^), it's tough to be such an integral part of the internet and not make mistakes. Keep us honest, send feedback and see what happens.

--Robert

Re:Fair enough

[Crazyscottie]

While you are correct in that FF is leaps and bounds ahead of IE in terms of standards compliance, it's worth noting that FF still doesn't pass the ACID2 test like Opera and some others do.

Re:Fair enough

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Here's a nice tool to use : http://www.browsercam.com/

Re:Fair enough

[orasio]

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 GPL, the freedom they are taking care of is that of the users.

The BSD lets the developer decide which freedoms he wants to transfer.
The GPL doesn't, it takes that freedom away from developers, and "gives it" to the users.