Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Yahoo Pushing IE7 On Firefox Users

Posted by kdawson on from the buy-my-free-browser-please dept.

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.

30 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Fair enough by El+Lobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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]

    --
    It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
    1. Re:Fair enough by Anti_Climax · · 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.

      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.

      --
      Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
    2. Re:Fair enough by Renegade88 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.
    3. Re:Fair enough by dubonbacon · · Score: 3, Informative

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

      --
      sw5YRhw4ln3pr7$Ock1/4ma0u8Lw2Tm5l6/7DOiC5e6t4NSb6T en 6g5AOCPa2Xs!MSr!p! hackerkey.com
    4. Re:Fair enough by asabjorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Fair enough by oyenstikker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      The masses are the crack whores of religion.
    6. Re:Fair enough by aztracker1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    7. Re:Fair enough by WhoBeDaPlaya · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    8. Re:Fair enough by Anne+Honime · · Score: 4, 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.

    9. Re:Fair enough by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. Doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny


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

  3. Does it matter? by uchihalush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Does it matter? by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ``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.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    2. Re:Does it matter? by ottothecow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Bottles.
  4. Yahoo? by thrillseeker · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  5. Not "pushing" until they block your user agent.. by plasmacutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  6. Re:Yahoo? by daeg · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  7. Hardly pushing by grasshoppa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's a freakin' ad.

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

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
  8. Oh the humanity by Handlarn · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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

  9. Re:Yahoo? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  10. Search-Market Consolidation and Free Market by reporter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

  11. Be independent. by Chaffar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Use the Lynx/Teoma combo.

  12. yahoo pushing firefox - no really by gsn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
  13. Re:I don't get it by Skater · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  14. Wasted ad if they don't check the OS by Chris+Tyler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  15. Pushing users off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  16. Apples and oranges by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:Image search as well by cp.tar · · Score: 3, Funny
    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.

    --
    Ignore this signature. By order.
  18. Repositories by Iriestx · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  19. Hmm... by Areian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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....