Google Releases Customized IE 7

narramissic writes "Google has released a customized version of Internet Explorer 7 that uses Google as the default search engine and provides users with the Google Toolbar and a Google homepage they can personalize. Perhaps not exactly what Microsoft intended when they released the Internet Explorer Administration Kit, which allows developers to customize IE."

Comments

They're not the first, are they?

[JeremyBanks]

Isn't this what Yahoo already did?

Re:They're not the first, are they?

[Chrismith]

Not only did Yahoo do this first, but when Google first released their version, they blatantly ripped off Yahoo's page.

If you look closely at the pictures, you can even see where they blurred out the "Y!" logo in the IE7 screenshot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Google supporter, but someone dropped the ball on this. (It's since been fixed.)

Re:They're not the first, are they?

[Simon Donkers]

Google noticed the fuss everywhere and has since then changed the page. A very interesting post about this is made by Matt Cutts (Google employee) on his private blog explaining how annoying it is if somebody steals your layout. Very interesting read.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ie7-promo-page/

Re:They're not the first, are they?

[gbjbaanb]

Yes, I was really pissed off that the time-honoured menu bar was removed for the sake of it. MS seems to be moving away from menus. Anyway, the good old menu can be restored - but once you do, you'll see its always underneath the toolbar (sigh). Fortunately, this registry key will put it back init s rightful position: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser " set the value "ITBar7Position" to a dwrord 1 and its back as you'd want it.

To turn the menu bar on in the first place - go to the tools menu/button and select 'menu bar'

(or put this in notepad, save as a reg file and then click it)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser]
"ITBar7Position"=dword:00000001

Re:But...

[NineNine]

Did Google ever pick a side in the browser wars?

Smart businesspeople would never call it a "war" or choose to pick sides. Just support the big ones, whatever they are. The customers are important. Google could care less what browser their customers use. Only geeks care about "the browser war".

Re:But...

[Tetravus]

Only geeks care about "the browser war".

Well, geeks and people who have to design two or three different implementations of a web page so it will show up correctly for all visitors. Oh, and the people who have to pay those developers who are now putting in overtime... and the content authors whose work is framed by the pages that the developers make (and want to appear equally professional to all visitors)... and maybe the investors in the company that hired the developers who want to get to IPO and get their money out as soon as possible.

But yeah, mostly just geeks care about that stuff ;-)

This is news?

[MeanMF]

Yeah I'm sure the Microsoft folks will be devastated if a lot of people download and use their software....

Isnt this exactly what Microsoft intended....

[slashnar]

Is everyone here this dumb?? This is exactly what was intended when the Administration kit was made. Microsoft would want everyone out there(Amazon, eBay, Apple for gods sakes) to be pushing out a customized version of IE7. Dont u get it??

Not really news...

[compupc1]

How is this news? The IE has been around for years and years. I remember using it to customize IE 5.5. It may have been around even earlier than that. And as to Microsoft somehow being upset, please look past the knee-jerk reaction and notice that the IE Blog, from Microsoft, actually praises the Google release, and links to their download page. This is what people are SUPPOSED to do with the IEAK. The article is really trying to make a big deal about something that's not...

Re:Activation?

[Arctic Dragon]

My IE7 Program File directory is 2.57MB, but since installing it required two reboots, I imagine that additional files are scattered all over the place.

A couple of months ago, I did some quick testing to see which browser uses the most RAM. I checked the RAM usage right after starting the browser with a blank page, and again after opening a total of 3 tabs (of course, YMMV):

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (default theme, no extensions)
blank page: 20MB
3 open tabs: 31MB

Mozilla Firefox trunk build (default theme, no extensions)
blank page: 20MB
3 open tabs: 30MB

Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1A
blank page: 17MB
3 open tabs: 28MB

K-Meleon 1.02
blank page: 15MB
3 open tabs: 24MB

Internet Explorer 6.0SP2
blank page: 11MB

Internet Explorer 7.0
blank page: 17MB
3 open tabs: 35MB

Opera 9.02
blank page: 14MB
3 open tabs: 24MB

Yahoo = Evil, Google = Good?

[TooManyNames]

Why is it that when this same story came out for Yahoo, everyone declared that Yahoo was "pushing IE7 on Firefox users?" People were even claiming that Yahoo was trying to leverage monopolistic practices. Now that Google has done exactly the same thing, people are claiming that this somehow diminishes Microsoft's original intentions (though I don't understand how having a popular search engine endorse your web browser would be a bad thing). How is Google's decision to use this strategy any different from Yahoo's? I'm just curious to know what sort of BS /. will provide in order to prove how Google's plan is so different and ethically superior to Yahoo's.

Re:Activation?

[SnprBoB86]

This is an extremely unscientific measurement.

1) The order in which you perform this test could influence which DLLs are loaded in which processes
2) Some applications may allocate memory in chunks or do other funky memory management
3) Which pages were used? Was it the same for each browser?
4) Do these pages include Flash, Java, or similar content which may indicate fault of plug-in rather than browser
5) prob a million more, it's late, I'm tired