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Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari
babooo404 writes "Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, "WTF" when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997. Now it appears that reports are out that Walmart has completely turned off the ability to get into the application at all by Firefox, Safari or any other browser it does not like."
And the internets was all like "double-you tee eff, mate?"
Raises its ugly head. I can't tell you how many development groups I'd seen hobbled by outside politics vs real-world applications and logic. Sounds all conspiracy theoryish, but in the world of marketing, you can't get away from these things. Looks like Wall Mart got the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
I mean come on, doesn't everyone know that the internet is run on Windows software and IE is the only REAL web browser! Anyone who uses anything else MUST be a hacker trying to break their site.
Which is why I use a user-agent that says "I am not a Googlebot/2.1". But change it to IE or something else if websites don't like it.
I wank in the shower.
They're not called the Evil Store Of Death for nothing.
Shocking revelation: one big profit driven multinational corporation being paid by another big profit driven multinational corporation to do something they probably shouldn't be doing. Whatever next?
I guess they just lost the chance in getting my money.
Well, I take that back, they never had a chance at getting my money.
As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest sonova bitch in the valley!
Firefox users by their very nature are the sort of people to try something new. Firefox is something you have to go out of your way to install on Windows, it's not bundled with Windows, and so I rather suspect that the 15% (approx) of internet users who have it as their primary browser are among the top 15% of people who are most likely to try a new video download service. Walmart are blocking the very people who will try this thing.
Now, if I were a Walmart stock holder I'd be asking some very searching questions about whether or not the board is acting in my best interest with this move. If I invest in a company I expect the people running it to work to make my investment pay a good return. Hell, they have a legal duty to do so (in the UK where I live anyway).
http://twitter.com/onion2k
FTA: "The video that you download requires Digital Rights Management 10 (DRM 10) software"
So, the video only works in Windows (Media Player 10+, presumably). I think it's safe to assume that if you have WMP10, you also have IE, so if making the site IE-only prevents* people from accessing it who can't use the product anyway, what's the big deal?
*Yeah, yeah. "I don't WANNA use IE on my Windows box. IE sucks." It's not like you have to UNinstall Firefox to do so, so suck it up, princess.
I've been on the fence about shopping at walmart for awhile. They're never my first choice, and I think I've only been shopping there about 5 times in the past year. After this, it's one more reason not to shop there. Yet another reason - unrelated - was that the last couple times I've been there I had great service from a particular employee. In both cases I made a point to call up the store's regional manager and praise this person. Two months later I found out that this employee had not received any mention, acknowledgement or recognition. Just seemed to speak volumes about how they treat their people, and this latest move speaks to how they treat their customers.
creation science book
Bit Torrent still works. It's completely cross-platform, too.
(When I said "Don't worry," I was saying that to the customers. WalMart should worry.)
-- My Weblog.
A lot of people thought this would go the way of their last video offering. It now seems that they are dedicated to making it a failure. Too bad, the more competitors in the on-line video business, the better.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Think of this as a favor on Walmart's side. They only want to suck money out of sackers who use IE. They spared FF/Safari users from their greed, so to say...
How many of FF/Safari users out there sincerely want to buy movies from Walmart? I don't even live in the States, so I wouldn't even try.
If you want to use this service, the downloads require Digital Rights Management 10 (DRM 10) software. This doesn't just lock out browsers that they don't know how to code for, but also all non-Microsoft operating systems.
The fact the Walmart is behind this also scares me. Walmart has changed the face of American retail for good and bad. Walmart has been able to force it's suppliers to bow to their knees for fear that Walmart doesn't carry their product. If the number one retailer in the world would have realized what their customers want, media without restrictions, this could have actually fought and easily won against the iTunes store, and NetFlix. I just hope this doesn't catch on, because it will give other retailers another justification to place Microsoft's desires above that of the consumers.
The part I dont like is people continue to support these tactics by using/patronizing the products/places that are directly responsible to taking away their choice and alternative. Wise up people. You may one day wake up to find you have no options left.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
we can always /. it
root of all...
HP Video Merchant
precisely why they do not care about what browser you use.
I reject your reality
Safari runs on Mac OS X. You can't watch the Walmart movies without WMP/DRM v10. You won't have that on a Mac. That's probably where Walmart's reasoning ends.
Walmart employees get benefits?
I get (after a few refreshes) (rendered as text from the server) an HTML page that reads: "The Wal-Mart Video Downloads store is currently unavailable due to temporary site maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience."
Either they're fixing it or are slashdotted?
As much as I hate Walmart, they did sell the Linspire systems; I think this is laziness more than intention.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Channel 4 (UK), Amazon, Blockbuster, etc. iTunes isn't in the same league, but still requires the use of a seperate app. Even some uploading is restricted, Metacafe (as was mentioned on /. a few weeks ago) uses flash (!) to upload videos and can't handle linux contributors.
There is currently no legal competition for the likes of TPB and Mininova, and thus the movie producers will keep losing out.
WalMart is so profitable because it targets average middle America. Its niche happens to be precisely the vast bulk of people who don't know much about computers and stick with the default Internet Explorer. Because the company targets this niche so successful, it obviously would feel little need to ensure that its site works with the minority of users who use other browsers. It's not fear of hackers, it's just a desire to do as little work as possible. In any event, should we really care about not being to shop online at Wal-Mart?
I had the same, "oh, so what?" reaction at first, but your post made me realize: Walmart's dominance in the marketplace (and indeed, calling them a "niche" retailer is hysterical) means that all those grandmothers, aunts, uncles, significant others, friends, etc which we have spent time convincing to use some other browser ("It works with almost everything, PLEASE use it instead of Internet Explorer") hit walmart.com and get a big "I DO NOT WORK WITH THIS SILLY LITTLE BROWSER."
What happens? Grandpa mutters something, we look like idiots/liars, the alternative browser never gets used again, and Internet Explorer's market share creeps back up. Grandpa tells his buddies at the VFW that his "rocket scientist" grandson installed some "Flame squirrel" browser that didn't *even* work with *Walmart's* website. Etc.
By the way, folks- it's best to encourage people to use almost anything but IE, and not just ONE other browser, to encourage standards compliance. Already, site designers seem to only care/brag about making sites work in IE or Firefox- and said site breaks in Safari, Opera, etc. That's not how the web is supposed to work.
Please help metamoderate.
Except that every computer has IE installed. What is the average user going to do? Write walmart a nasty letter because firefox won't work on their site, or just click on the little blue "e" and copy the URL into internet explorer? You must remember that us techno-geeks don't make up a whole lot of marketshare. The average user is just going to use what works.
I got nothin'
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Of course once users do get in the website, they'll most likely find that the available content if wrapped in MS-only DRM. So getting in with Safari or Firefox (on a non Windows machine) would presumably be pointless anyway (except possibly to transfer the data to a windows machine at a later time, assuming that such a thing is even possible).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
If you don't like what Wal-Mart is doing the answer is pretty simple -- don't shop there.
This is one of those things where the market will correct itself. The natural evolutionary path being that they will lose market share to users of non-Windows based platforms as well as Windows users that use non-IE browsers. That's probably a fair segment of the market.
This problem will take care of itself.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
You must have missed the poster's other line: us techno-geeks don't make up a whole lot of marketshare.
I highly doubt there's many average users who have home-built PCs without Windows.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
You're exaggerating to say that 35 percent of the market uses something other than IE. As a Safari user, I'd certainly like more people to use anything other than IE, simply because it forces sites to pay attention to cross-platform compatibility. But IE still controls something like 80 percent of the market.
= 0
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
That's simply not true. Modern IE is Windows-only. IE5 was the last version that had any non-Windows implementations. MS abandoned both the MacOS and Solaris versions years ago, leaving them full of holes that will never be fixed and non-functional on modern systems. Apple is shipping half a million Macs every month without IE and with no way to run IE without an emulator, virtual machine, or dual-boot setup.
This is true, but off-target. The Mac segment of the home computer population (which is significantly larger than the Linux segment or the Mac share of new sales) is not mostly "techno-geeks" at all. Depending on whose numbers you believe (and WM's internal numbers might be best for them...) the shunning of non-IE browsers locks out 7-20% of users completely, and they are generally a more affluent segment.
Of course, that does not mean the decision by WM is not smart business. They know all about market segmentation and how to focus on winnable games. The no-IE segment is messy and expensive to serve, and the biggest slice (Mac users) has a lock-in to the existing dominant player in commercial video download: Apple. There's also a problem with the content providers: they demand strong DRM and that is hard to provide without staying MS-only or being Apple.
They misspelled "DRM protection".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No. This is Walmart's competitor to the iTunes Store. And Mac users are not welcome. It's almost as if Walmart doesnt't want to actually succeed. They've up and launched a competing solution, and then told a very large chunk of potential switchers that there will be no easy migration. This goes way beyond stupid and in to the territory of not working in stockholder's interests.
We all know that there are no technical reasons for Walmart's store to be IE only. Either Walmart does not want the store to be successful, or they are being bribed to make it IE-only, or their studio-approved DRM is Windows-only. No matter what, there is something underhanded going on here.
1. Wal-Mart fears they will lose customers to Apple.
2. Wal-Mart launches internet distribution.
3. Wal-Mart removes Safari and Firefox support, thus ensuring they WILL lose customers to Apple.
4. PROFIT! err... Oh, snap!
Not this one.
Nothing here in Lynx.
Mind you, the video plug-in for lynx sucks anyway.
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