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

Fair enough

[El Lobo]

They are not "pushing". It's just an advertisement. I have seen worse, for example all those Firefox evangelistic campaigns like: "Make history with Firefox", "Rediscovery the web with Firefox", "Add a Firefox button to your web", "Firefox in your email signature", "Firefox site prefeared" . Hell I've even seen a "Screw IE" button once on some "respected" site
Nothing different from this "Firefox protects you" official Google site: http://www.google.com/firefox
Fair enough. Nothing to see here, folks [bg]

Re:Fair enough

[Anti_Climax]

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.

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, the switch was an easy decision for me. Pundit asshattery hurt rather than helped the situation.

Re:Fair enough

[Renegade88]

Linux free for over 10 years.... And proud of it!

Just like every other lemming around. Nothing to be proud of in particular.

Many BSD users have been Linux-free this whole time, other than the ones that teethed on Linux, then quickly realized there was something better (like me). Just because someone doesn't use Linux doesn't automatically mean they are using an inferior OS.

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

[asabjorn]

I would agree if it was not for the fact that Microsoft acquired the browser market share that it currently has through questionable practices (read monopoly abuse) so the tactics it is using to target the users of it's biggest competition should be limited. From Yahoo!s perspective it probably makes sense financially to do such a deal with Microsoft, but inherently this is more about Microsoft trying to push it's browse platform as a way to lock users in to it's main platform. Therefore it would be better if Microsoft was prohibited from doing such deals because that would probably increase the competition in the marketplace and Yahoo! could make a similar deal with an alternative browser instead (e.g Opera).

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.

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.

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

[oyenstikker]

Develop on Safari or Konqueror. I have had to fix sites that were written by professionals who develop on Firefox, but used invalid CSS that Firefox and IE handled gracefully, but incorrectly.

Re:Fair enough

[penguinrenegade]

Since you're asking in curiosity, I'm responding, not flaming whatsoever.

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.

Think about it this way - car manufacturers often copy other models and features. Some are better, some are worse.

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.

BSD is typically more stable than a comparable Linux installation. This is not always the case, several people may want to mod me down, but BSD IS STABLE.

BSD also doesn't have Microsoft screaming about IP infringement. Microsoft hasn't sued Apple for it, and they CERTAINLY would go after them if they had done it, since they're the deepest pockets based upon BSD.

BSD also has many tight-knit communities, some of which offer certain things people may like.

Remember, I like BSD and Linux - have used both for some time!

Re:Fair enough

[Rinzai]

I would agree if it was not for the fact that...

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 that everyone should be using Firefox?

Maybe I'm a little on the thick side today, but how is everybody using Firefox better than everybody using IE? Isn't that just as anti-competitive?

And, before you web designers and developers start chiming in about CSS compliance, think about this: in a hypothetical world where all extant browsers were CSSx compliant, would it really matter which browser anyone used?

What I've found over the years is that it's an extremely teenage attitude to assert that just because one prefers iPod over Zune, or Firefox over IE, or Skecher over Nike, that everyone else should as well. I believe it's called...egocentrism?

Re:Fair enough

[jlarocco]

While you are correct that the current release of FF does not pass the acid2 test, it is worth noting that the code to correct this is and achieve acid2 compliance is included in the current development branch of FF, and it will be operational in the next release.

The "development branch", the "alpha", the "beta" and the "release candidate" don't count. If you want to compare development branches, Opera, Konqueror, and Safari make Firefox look even more pathetic.

Re:Fair enough

[aztracker1]

Binary compatability across a version tree... in other words, if you are running v4.1 BSD and go to 4.2, your drivers still work, good thing for binary drivers (nvidia, ati, etc)... down side is it isn't as well supported..

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 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.

Re:Fair enough

[Alien Being]

"Most of the time these "facts" turn out to be opinions."

In this case, a federal court that ruled that it was a fact that MS abused its monopoly position.

Re:Fair enough

[aztracker1]

Honestly, I develop in windows, mainly because I like asp.net and VS 2005, I use a windows XP vmware setup under Ubuntu 6.10. I test in IE6 (now IE7, since it's being force-fed), Firefox 2, Opera 9, Konqueror and Safari under Windows, OSX, and Linux (where a given browser is available).

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 different between windows and osx or linux.

I would suggest at *LEAST* testing in a minimum of IE6 (if you need to support it), IE7 (though some of the bugs in it *REALLY* piss me off), and Forefox 2 ... since these are the *VAST* majority of what web users are using. It really isn't that hard to account for differing browsers...

Suggestion: Use a platform that supports server-side scripting. Have the header section issue css files as follows...

• site.css
• site.BROWSER.css
• site.BROWSER.MAJ.css
• site.BROWSER.MAJ.MIN.css
• page.ext.css
• page.ext.BROWSER.css
• page.ext.BROWSER.MAJ.css
• page.ext.BROWSER.MAJ.MIN.css

Where the actual file exists, and browser is broken down into the class of browser. This way you can have your main css, and tweak for browser instances... you can also have a page css, as well as browser tweaks at that level, yes, checking for each of these files existance is a small overhead (not bad with most file-systems that cache this information), but it is well worth it. Generally I have the site, site.IE, site.OPERA, and site.IE.7.0 at this point, and rarely have to include browser specific tweaks in the page's css.

Re:Fair enough

[Rob Menke]

Microsoft sold all of its shares in Apple years ago (at a tidy profit, too). "Microsoft (still) owns Apple" is an urban legend that will not die.

Re:Fair enough

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

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

Re:Fair enough

[Salmar]

There's no question that using Internet Explorer greatly compromises your internet security (now slightly less so with IE7), but yeah, an audio recording imforming you of a browser 'infection' is a bit much. I've even seen some relatively small anti-IE buttons that were similarly disrespectful. Insulting IE users isn't the way to win converts, even if Firefox is the most advanced, customizable and secure browser around.

That said, I'm still a bit miffed that Mozilla hasn't remedied their JavaScript issues in 2.0.

Re:Fair enough

[Anne Honime]

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.

Re:Fair enough

[Salmar]

Yeah. A couple of icons on the desktop and in the start menu would have been much better. :) Uh, I don't think you're clear about our discussion:

by Anti_Climax:

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. Were you thinking about how Firefox installs itself? It does what you described: it gives you options to place an icon on your desktop and/or the start menu. No sound recording.

On a tangential note, have you tried installing Firefox?

Re:Fair enough

[sremick]

"That aside, why is it that everyone makes such a big freakin' deal about what browser Joe Customer uses?"

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 competition. Without competition, you have a monopoly and prices spiral upwards (just take a look at the prices for Vista).

2) Security. The internet is inter-connected. A bad apple is a burden on others on the network. John's infected Windows PC affects plenty of others, with attempted infections, DDOS attacks at machines or websites, junk email, and just added traffic that slows down the internet. Even though I don't use IE or Windows, those that do and get their machines infected have a direct negative effect on me and my online experience. All that spam sure as hell isn't coming from my FreeBSD, Mac or Linux friends running Firefox/Safari/Konqueror/Epiphany/Galleon/Opera/et c.

3) Support. Those with the most grievances with Windows tend to be IE users. I am empathetic to my friends and family... it is not pleasant for me to hear about their computers being rendered useless by infections, and their pains and struggles getting them fixed. I often fix the computers of close friends/family for free out of pity but I'd much rather they didn't have to endure that and learn about stuff like Firefox the hard way. I really don't care that they use Firefox, just that they DON'T use IE (or anything based on IE). "Anything but IE" = "much fewer computer problems", plain and simple. Unfortunately their monopoly OS likes to push their monopoly browser and most users just don't know any better, and suffer horrendously for it.

Re:Fair enough

[a.d.trick]

I'm guessing you know almost nothing about web development.

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 developers get really annoyed and do something like this. I don't think it's a good idea to intentionaly block any browser, but that's why they do it.

As for me, I develop my site so that it works in any standards-compliant browser and IE users get to see it in all IE's buggy glory (which usually isn't that bad because I know how to avoid the common bugs). If I was getting money from my website I might make some more work to make IE work nicely, but right now I really don't care.

Re:Fair enough

[TheNetAvenger]

but used invalid CSS that Firefox and IE handled gracefully, but incorrectly.


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.

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.

Re:Fair enough

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

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 me when I've enabled "quirks mode" -- if I haven't, then I know I'm not relying on any Firefox-specific intelligence.

This means that by the time I'm done with a page, I'm pretty well guaranteed to have it work on any browser that supports the standards.

Your suggestion about "smartness" is one of the most frustrating things for the web community. IE is "smart" in certain ways that other browsers aren't "smart" in, and in fact, ways that kind of break the standards. However, even if IE was fully standards-compliant, any additional "smartness" is harmful, because it means that lazy web developers will develop under IE, see it render fine, slap a "Best viewed in IE" notice, and call it a day -- leaving tons of crap in there that relies on a particular kind of "smartness" that may not be supported everywhere.

I think having Safari (and others) actually fail on such asinine pages is a well-deserved slap in the face to lazy web developers. As long as developers continue to depend on certain types of "smartness", including the old "hide javascript code from older browsers" trick, we will be stuck with relatively large, bloated browsers. A particular type of "smartness" will become a defacto standard, and any browser that doesn't support that type of "smartness" will be called stupid by developers and users alike, even if it supports the standards to the letter.

Hello? This is why we have standards. This is why we have w3.org. They are meant to make development and browsing easier, not harder. If your site doesn't validate, the Validator will tell you, and it'll look wrong on one of the major browsers. If most web developers did that, it would mean we could all use browsers like Safari, because so few sites would look wrong, and we'd be able to complain loudly to the few that still did.

It's a chicken and egg problem, yes, but I work at it from both ends. I pick Firefox for other reasons, but I'd rather have strict web compliance both in my browser and on my websites. I would much rather be part of the solution than part of the old problems, still dragging along things that were considered "smart" back in the days of dialup.

Re:Fair enough

[TheNetAvenger]

Until a browser gives informative warnings by default and that can be switched off if needed, preferably by site, browsers that render broken sites are just that. Broken. Silently acquiescing to broken code is broken behavior. It needs to be visible to be fixed.



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 the companies that FINALLY has seemed to get this is MS, their new Web Designer/Sharepoint (Frontpage replacement) is very good about forcing the developer to adhere to the page rules they select. If they choose XHTML Strict, CSS xx, then the application will scold them if any tag is messed up and even explain why.

Sadly the old Frontpage really failed here, as well as dreamweaver and other tools. For example, just opening a site that the old Frontpage 2003 thought was perfect will show 100s of errors on the page and even explains that this tag will work but is not compliant and should be changed. Also incorporating the VS style of intellisense and redlining it might push a lot of developers to start making compliant sites.

I just hope the rest of the industry follows suit and not only builds better compliant making tools, but also forces the developers to adhere. Right now there are so many site development tools that try to make things easy for the developers, but in generating the code (like dreamweaver for example) the software generated code fails compliance miserably. Not everyone is a tag guru and can't then fix the software generated html that is messed up.

I think we all should put more pressure on site development tools and hosting sites that use really crappy standards, rather than complain about something that should be for end users, the browser.

Re:Fair enough

[TheNetAvenger]

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 me when I've enabled "quirks mode" -- if I haven't, then I know I'm not relying on any Firefox-specific intelligence.


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 responsibility to debug our sites. Browsers are END USER tools that are to display the page the best it can with what crap the site provides. So, intelligence in the browser DOES screw the developer, but it HELPS the end users and that is what it should do, as they are the customers of the sites, the base.

We should instead focus on development tools that are smarter about compliance and force developers to adhere. Using MS as an example, a little intellisense wouldn't hurt a lot of the site developers. (Self closing tags, proper tags, redline bad tags, object preditction, etc.)

We shouldn't be developing major sites in notepad anymore, those days should be as far gone as developing Halo3 in notepad and compiling from the command prompt.

The development tools are where we should focus our anger about allowing crap they shouldn't or at least warning developers about crap tags. As I pointed out in another post, MS has finally 'gotten' this through their head, and the new replacement for frontpage is more of a site development environment. As far as web development tools, it is by far the most complete our developers have seen for keeping strict compliance, and is quite refreshing for them that they had some assistance that they are not using outdated tags or breaking the rules.

This is where the focus needs to be right now, espeically with so many standards and so few people understanding them well.

The only bridge between your concept of using a browser for debugging would be to ask for debugging versions of IE and Firefox (true debugging versions, not just one that displays crap wrong.) However, the focus right now STILL needs to be on the site development tools to do their job, expecially when there is software out there that generates HTML for novices and the generated HTML is horribly wrong when it comes to standards or compliance.

Windows geeks or anyone with a VM should check out the new Frontpage replacement software - it is in two versions, Sharepoint Designer as a part of Office and Web Designer as a part of the Expression projects. I think the betas are still available for download, and if not trial versions should be before long. They are not perfect, but a MAJOR step in the right direction considering these are from MS...

Re:Fair enough

[Anne Honime]

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 can do it, and I refuse to do it because standards are usefull if they are respected, and useless when violated. Worse, it actually promotes lazyness a) from the users of IE7 because there's no incentive for them to switch if it simply works from their point of view - anyway, they won't reward you for any extra care you took, they feel they desserve your time. Well, too bad, wrong. And b) it promotes lazyness and malpractice at Microsoft, and it's akin in fact to active support of their "embrace and extend" strategy for coders to spend time where Microsoft really should have. And it help them defeat open standards at the same time. If something is needed at Microsoft, it's not complacency with their mischiefs, it's strict enforcement of general public rules. And this is up to any user vigilance.

So in a word, it neither is a strength nor a weakness to strictly enforce standards. It's a about politeness. I do my best to talk to whomever likes to read me in decent languages, both in "human" form and "computer" xhtml, and I expect visitors to be educated enough to understand both. And if I'm wrong, well, those are people I'm not very likely to have pleasure to have a relation with anyway.

Doomed to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody's using Yahoo for search, including people who work at Yahoo.

Re:Doomed to fail

[Yvan256]

Nobody's using Yahoo for search

Except Yahoo Serious.

Does it matter?

[uchihalush]

It's not really a big deal because if the experience on Firefox really better than IE, as we tout it is, then the converters will have no choice but to stick. Even if they download IE to see if it's better, the better browser WILL in fact win. We are not talking about people who are reluctant to switch, it's those who already have. If they are not having an enjoyable experience on firefox then let em leave who the hell cares?

Re:Does it matter?

[RAMMS EIN]

``It's not really a big deal because if the experience on Firefox really better than IE''

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?

[ottothecow]

There is definately a page on my university's site (dont remember where though, sorry) that exploits an IE CSS bug to display a firefox download link only to IE users. No fancy browser-checking code here, just some valid CSS that is improperly displayed on IE.

Yahoo?

[thrillseeker]

Wasn't that one of the pre-Google search engines?

Detailed analysis follows.

[Daath]

Ok, where to start. Let's see... Ok, here goes: So what? Who cares?
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..

[plasmacutter]

It's not "pushing" until they block the user agent of your browser..

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.

'Targeting Firefox Users'?

[Justus]

I'm all for getting riled up and everything, but you know, it's rather more likely that Yahoo is pushing IE7 on anyone who's not running IE7 (so Firefox, Safari, IE6 or lower, etc) instead of specifically trying to get you to switch from Firefox.

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?

Re:Yahoo?

[Daath]

Here you go, and you're welcome :)

What's the problem?

[Alex Kraskramp]

I don't see a problem with this. I you don't want to download IE7,.. fine. No hurt feelings. I don't use Yahoo's services; I prefer Google. Google wants me to download and install its Google Toolbar, Google Desktop search engine, et cetera. I choose not to and I did not experience their offerings as a nuisance or anything more evil than what I experience when I walk into a random stones-and-bricks store. By the way, Google does not promote FireFox as a form of pure altruism. Businesses make business decissions.

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.

Hardly pushing

[grasshoppa]

It's a freakin' ad.

Pushing would be forcing you to install IE7 to use yahoo.

Re:Yahoo?

[Timesprout]

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

Oh the humanity

[Handlarn]

Yahoo and Internet Explorer 7 vs Google and Firefox 2...

What to chose? Hmmm... What to chose?

Re:Oh the humanity

[Mitchell Mebane]

Clearly, Google wins.

Re:Oh the humanity

[Pasquina]

Yahoo Agrees:

Yahoo and Internet Explorer 7: 9,170,000 results
Google and Firefox 2: 26,500,000 results

Re:Yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo isn't totally useless as a search engine. Just look for Best Search Engine, and it'll point you the right way.

Re:Not "pushing" until they block your user agent.

[morgan_greywolf]

Yours isn't the only one. I'm a University of Phoenix grad, and they have a block on non-IE browsers on their student access site. Worse, one student I know of who goes there tells me that some classes have requirements to read DRMed eBooks with Adobe Reader, and of course, all though there is an Adobe Reader for her platform of choice (GNU/Linux), it doesn't support the DRM.

Search-Market Consolidation and Free Market

[reporter]

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.

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.

ads? too many

[tomstdenis]

I just re-opened my yahoo account. I'd say a good 35% of the screen is ads, all over the place, along the left, in the message pane, along the right, the top, ads ads ads.

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.

[Chaffar]

Use the Lynx/Teoma combo.

yahoo pushing firefox - no really

[gsn]

so I just went to search.yahoo.com after eons and what do I see on the top of the page

"Use Yahoo! to search from Firefox
Just select "Yahoo!" from the search box drop-down menu in your browser"

screenshot

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.

huh!

[syd108]

I thought we only discussed about stuff that matters? Oh well if that were true I would have not posted this either

Re:I don't get it

[Skater]

Very bottom of the page. I just got it running Firefox 2.0 on Linux (Kubuntu). THAT'S what passes for "pushing" these days? An "MS IE Optimized for Yahoo" ad at the BOTTOM of the page, below all the results, navbar, etc.? "Pushing" IE to me would be, say, blocking use of search.yahoo.com with other browsers or something - and even that would be questionable "pushing" since there are plenty of other search engines, and I don't think Yahoo's is so great that I could live without it (in fact, until just now, I haven't used it since Google appeared).

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.

Interesting...

[ogott]

Seems as if right now, when I'm performing a search on Yahoo.com using Safari, there's an 'ad' on the bottom of the page leading to a download of the Yahoo Toolbar for IE or Firefox (explicitly for Win, Mac, Linux). On the other hand, when I use Firefox (under Mac OSX as well), there is the link for IE7 instead.

Wasted ad if they don't check the OS

[Chris Tyler]

I just tried a search on Yahoo and got the same ad. They must have checked the User Agent string to see that I was using Firefox. But why didn't they check to see if I was using Windows? -- why bother advertising IE to me if I can't run it on my system?

Who?

[Iriestx]

Yah-who?

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

Apples and oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD is a distribution of BSD. Linux is a kernel. You're comparing one distribution of BSD to the multitude of Linux distributions.

You have a point, but you're making it poorly.

Re:Image search as well

[cp.tar]

assholes will be rendered in 3-D

Do we want a 3D goatse?

Now excuse me, I have to go and rinse my eyes with some acid.

It's not about search...

[NineNine]

... it's about all of Yahoo's cool stuff. Mail, Music, Shopping, Finance, Auctions, etc. Yahoo has the best personalized web experience, in my opinion, and it doesn't have anything to do with their search.

Repositories

[Iriestx]

Boy.. I just can't seem to find this IE7 they recommend in any of the Ubuntu file repositories.

Re:Yahoo?

[slyguy135]

And in the Top Ten results for that search, MSN comes... nowhere at all. Even HotBot came 5th!

And it didn't come anywhere in the Top 40 either, pop music fans. Oh dear.

Hmm...

[Areian]

Strange, but I couldn't find the ad on either http://www.yahoo.com/ or http://search.yahoo.com/ using Firefox on my XP machine. In fact, the first time I opened http://search.yahoo.com/, the site told me how to access the yahoo search-plugin on a default Firefox install....

Re:No need for CSS hacks

[ottothecow]

But the irony of the CSS hacks is that you dont have to use browser detection or some silly IE "feature". It is valid CSS that doesnt show on other browsers and only shows because of broken CSS in IE. If microsoft was to fix the CSS, it would eliminate advertising for their competition in addition to better supporting to the standards which would make some people happy.

Of course if the CSS hack wasnt widespread, there wouldnt be much gain from eliminating the advertising...

Javascript - the devil?

[Keeper Of Keys]

Yes. Isn't it terrible that you can't create interactivity on the web without "resorting" to the interactivity layer.

A bit more than preference

[twoallbeefpatties]

As a Mac user, and a fan of obscure music videos and Husker football games, it's been a serious source of annoyance that Launch and Yahoo Sports both require the latest version of Windows Media Player to run. And when there are so few diverse video sites out there, and the Oklahoma Sooners website linked straight to Yahoo Sports as the only place to hear the Big 12 Championship game for those of us living out of state, that means that sometimes you really miss out on content just for your choice of computer, much less your choice of browser, for which those sites also require IE on top of the Windows base interface. When a site as big as Yahoo makes it clear that they express a serious preference in browsing, that can have a real impact on market share for people who really want to get into a specific site.