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."

Comments

WTF?

[DeeZee]

And the internets was all like "double-you tee eff, mate?"

Re:WTF?

[rsborg]

And the internets was all like "double-you tee eff, mate?"

Hokay...

Re:WTF?

[jdmicklos]

No... not so be it. When corporations center back to a single source, the community at whole is effected. Now I understand that this Walmart action isn't devastating, it does effect us. Do you want to become South Korea?

Re:WTF?

[agallagh42]

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on 2000pro and just checked the Walmart site. No problem at all. I found they sell "Idiocracy" for $18 and change.

Not that I shop at Walmart because I'm one of those "support small business" types. Has anyone else with Firefox, Safari, Opera and other browsers tried going to the Walmart site? Yes, the Walmart site works fine in Firefox. It's their music download site that doesn't work. Try this: go to walmart.com, click on the "Entertainment" menu, select "Music", then click the big gray "Music Downloads" button. That's when you get the following message:

We notice you're not using Internet Explorer. To continue, please visit this page using Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. I'm on Vista Ultimate with Firefox 2.0.0.1. It works fine when I use IE7 of course.

Re:WTF?

[Fyre2012]

We're sorry, your operating system is incompatible. To provide the best download experience, we can no longer support Windows 98, ME or NT. Please visit again after you upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP

I'm using OS X and FF on my MacBook Pro, and apparently I need to upgrade to XP.
For my next trick, I'm going to grow gills. Take THAT progress!

Re:WTF?

[Cobralisk]

And what would happen to your seoul?

The old alliance parter program

[mgabrys_sf]

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.

Re:The old alliance parter program

[msobkow]

I don't know about partnership programs, but I do know that I've run into a couple of websites that use Flash media which claim that the latest version distributed by Novell as part of OpenSuSE 10 is not complaint. Yet as far as I'm aware the versions correlate, so it's just bad scripting on the part of bands and others who insist on using Flash in their websites, not a problem with the deployed tools or browsers.

I've never liked the idea of coding to a browser. Use the standard query tags to determine the browser capabilities, and let any ugliness fall on the head of the vendor who ships incompatible crap. At very least, default to pure W3C, not Microsquishy.

Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[Ridayah]

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.

Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[CRCulver]

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.

I don't think it's that at all. 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? Check out a report like Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect (New York: Penguin, 2006) and you'll be convinced to take your business anywhere but there. At the same time you help Grandma install Firefox to beat the constant threat of spyware and adware installation, you might also want to do a good turn by doing some shopping for her at a locally-owned store...assuming you have any left.

Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[suv4x4]

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.

This would be funny, if it wasn't true. This was coming 1:1 from the mouth of one of my big clients (and otherwise a smart fella), just 10 months ago.

I would explain in a long tirade how Firefox is picking up and so on and so on. He'd just say "Nah, don't spend a second testing in Firefox, they'll have to use a REAL browser /IE/.".

Of course, I was secretly testing in other browsers for the hell of it, since I'm your typical thickheaded geek.

A month ago, the same client comes back crying that something broke the feature in the new Firefox 2.0. The irony.

(Also, turned out the issue was from a tweak HE made, after reverting it was ok.)

Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[mdrebelx]

In any event, should we really care about not being [able] to shop online at Wal-Mart? Check out a report like Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect (New York: Penguin, 2006) and you'll be convinced to take your business anywhere but there.

I have not shopped Wal-Mart for years. I started getting a bad taste for them with the whole music censorship that was really brought to light when they banned Sheryl Crow for daring to have a lyric about Wal-Mart and refusing to change it. There is a whole litany of reasons to see Wal-Mart as an "Evil Empire": the censorship, the employee practices, the bullying and bankrupting of suppliers, the complete annihilation of small-businesses in small-towns, the indirect forcing of jobs out of the U.S. while still draping themselves in the American flag. Even the store's logo and themes are red, white, and blue while their practices are quite un-American.

In a way it makes perfect sense that Wal-Mart would be in bed with Microsoft. Both companies have a storied history of questionable business practices and ethics. Both companies devour the competition, offer you some watered-down compromise, and tell you how great it is. Both companies seek total domination and are getting more desperate as they see their dominance starting to erode. Really, this shouldn't be much of a surprise.

Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[prichardson]

I see you got modded informative, so presumably someone understood you. I can not grasp what you mean to save my life. What do you mean?

Where does your quotation end? Whom would you CC the email to? When do you offer them this discount? If you're discounting your services almost exactly as much is you charge, how is this supposed to increase profits? For which request is the grandparent supposed to charge this mystery amount of money?

Clarity: it's not just for breakfast anymore.

Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[that this is not und]

Living in a small town, I am glad I don't have to pay the extortion that small-town-businesses are prone to charge for ordinary daily items. The local hardware store charges like six times as much for some items than I pay for them at Lowes or WalMart.

Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari

[SonicSpike]

It's not extortion... Small independent businesses in rural and outlying areas don't have the buying power and shipping infrastructure that these multinational mega corps have. In other words, because Wal Mart buys 100,000 hammers in a year they get them for $5 a piece and only ya $.25 to have them shipped. The mom and pop store in Podunk, Nowhere (BFE) might only buy 100 hammers a year. Because they dont get a bulk rate, they have to pay $7 per hammer, and $.75 for shipping per hammer.

This is just an example but it goes to show that with massive pockets comes distribution and an ability to get bulk rates.

User-Agent

[apathy maybe]

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.

Re:User-Agent

[g2devi]

It's not always possible. Sometimes websites use IE-specific features like VBScript or ActiveX or other IE-specific features (or bugs) as a test.

what do you expect?

[Peter La Casse]

They're not called the Evil Store Of Death for nothing.

Shocker...

[ChowRiit]

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?

Re:Shocker...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

IIRC, there was a big splash last year about Walmart selling Linux PC's. So it was reasonable to hope for a little while that, although they are undeniably mighty and evil, that they might be fighting the equally mighty and evil Microsoft, thus (however unintentionally) serving the forces of good. Kind of a Stalin vs. Hitler thing. Now it seems the nonagression pact is back in force.

Hrmph. Serves them right.

[BrianRaker]

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.

It's their business.

[onion2k]

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).

Seems reasonable to me

[GNU(slash)Nickname]

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.

Won't shop there

[mgkimsal2]

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.

Don't worry

[wirefarm]

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.)

born dead

[gravesb]

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.

they are doing a favor

[KH]

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.

stop supporting the product if you dont like it

[bl8n8r]

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.

even if we cannot access it

[SilentGhost]

we can always /. it

Re:Hrmph. Serves them right.

[wcb4]

precisely why they do not care about what browser you use.

Pushing people back to IE

[SuperBanana]

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.

Re:Pushing people back to IE

[Belial6]

That's why I always open install the 'open with IE' Add-On. Then when Grandma says that the site doesn't work, I can tell her that the site is broken, and might not be secured. I explain that she can get to it by clicking the open with ie button, but she should know that it might break her computer if she does. I explain the IE doesn't tell you when the site is broken or insecure. I then make a face, and tell her that ...Well... Walmart MIIGGGHHHT be safe, but that I'm surprised such a big store would have an insecure broken site. This has the following effects:

She doesn't immediately switch back to IE.
She places the blame for the broken site on the proper entity
She avoids sites that are IE only, as she perceives them as dangerous and broken
She can still go to the sites that are IE only if it is really important to her.

If it is a site that she is going to go to anyway, you can set the plug in to automatically load in IE, and grandma care for that site.

There are some work-arounds though

[MCRocker]

websites that use Flash media which claim that the latest version distributed by Novell as part of OpenSuSE 10 is not complaint. Yet as far as I'm aware the versions correlate, so it's just bad scripting on the part of bands and others who insist on using Flash in their websites, not a problem with the deployed tools or browsers.

I've never liked the idea of coding to a browser. Use the standard query tags to determine the browser capabilities

Thankfully, there are things that can be done about some of these sorts of problems, like changing the user agent (use about:config in Firfox) or using tools like Greasemonkey, Web Developer and Firebug to "fix" poorly designed web sites. Unfortunately, these tools are unknown to most users and some are difficult for the average user to use and even power users ofen find it more work than it's worth to fix bad sites.

Re:This is Microshaft... pure and simple.

[wkcole]

Except that every computer has IE installed

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.

You must remember that us techno-geeks don't make up a whole lot of marketshare.

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.

Misspelled DRM...

[fahrbot-bot]

We're sorry, your operating system is incompatible. To provide the best download experience, we can no longer support Windows 98, ME or NT.

They misspelled "DRM protection".

How to shoot yourself in the foot, twice...

[SnowDog74]

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!

Re:This is Microshaft... pure and simple.

[IL-CSIXTY4]

Except that every computer has IE installed.

Not this one.

Text only browsers

[rishistar]

Nothing here in Lynx.

Mind you, the video plug-in for lynx sucks anyway.