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.

Fair enough

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 [google.com]
Fair enough. Nothing to see here, folks [bg]

Re:Fair enough

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

Re:Fair enough

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.

Search-Market Consolidation and Free Market

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.

Re:Fair enough

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

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

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

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

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 [pcbsd.org] 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.

Doomed to fail

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

Does it matter?

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?

``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?

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?

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

Re:Yahoo?

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.

Re:Yahoo?

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

Detailed analysis follows.

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..

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'?

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?

Yahoo Games

I've noticed that some of the games that yahoo hosts don't work properly on firefox.

What's the problem?

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.

I don't get it

I just tried Yahoo Search. I haven't seen the ad for IEv7 in half a dozen different searches (using Firefox v2.0 as my browser).

Could this be because I have already installed IEv7? Or because I was using FF v2.0 and therefore not a likely candidate for upgrading?

In any event, I favor anything that would encourage people to migrate from IEv6 to something that was more secure and complied better with web standards, even IEv7. We'll all be better off for that.

Re:I don't get it

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.

"Pushing" it to Mac users too...

I've seen the same thing, and I'm on a Mac which obviously prevents me from using IE7 if I wanted to (which I don't).

malware evolution

I am guessing this the next logical step from the toolbar plague we experienced a few years back.

Hardly pushing

It's a freakin' ad.

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

Oh the humanity

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

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

ads? too many

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.

Use the Lynx/Teoma combo.

yahoo pushing firefox - no really

so I just went to search.yahoo.com [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 [flickr.com]

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.

who cares

Who actually uses Yahoo any more, anyway?

Funny...

I searched for "browser" in yahoo using FF2 and XPSP2 and got nothing but advertisements for Firefox... Try it yourself!

huh!

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

bitten back

all it will mean in the end is that nobody will go to yahoo anymore because they'll use Microsoft search by default. Yahoo can avoid this with their own version of firefox that puts yahoo as its default search engine

Interesting...

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

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?

Yah-who?

Yahoo never gets it!

Yahoo does not get it. Can you imagine that even now, Yahoo's Launchcast service does not support Firefox! When one attempts to use it, he is faced with this "Error Code: 24."

No wonder they (Yahoo) are a struggling company by some measures these days. It does not have to be that way. It's because of this reason that it is my mission to avoid Yahoo services as much as possible.

The pushing of Internet Explorer 7 is yet another arrogant and bigoted notion that tends to lean on the premise that all internet users use the Windows platform, which is grossly false.

Pushing users off

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.

They can push

as much as they want....
Yahoo is only used for weather pages, way too noisy... and -
W2K can't run IE7, not to speak about the "Advantage" thingie....

Yep

No editorial intent here, but I can confirm that that's what happens. When I go to yahoo.com with Firefox 2.0 in Vista and search, I get the ad and link. When I use IE7, I don't.

I don't see it

I dunno, I guess it's because I have .*ads.* and .*/b\?.* adblocked?

people ask why do I block advertisements. I respond "Why do I mute the television and go online during a commerical break?"

What is the Problem?

Although I am a Firefox user, personally I don't see anything wrong with what Yahoo is doing here. They are using THEIR website to promote a product of THEIR choice which may also be configured to use Yahoo as the default search engine. They are not forcing anyone to download IE7 and unless you run out and buy a copy of Vista before the end of January it was not pre-installed on your computer. Granted, IE7 was listed by Microsoft as a critical update in their update services, but that was the doing of Microsoft, not Yahoo. Should one not be free to advertise and promote the products of their choosing on their own website?

what ever happend to Netscape?

I just want to know if Netscape is not even in the game anymore.

I know Mozilla, and Firefox is kind of part of the "Netscape",
but it looks so far removed in the browser war it's hard to belive that they where ever in the game.

I meen who remmbers mosaic, internet in a box, and the other hand full of browsers that where on the market in the 90s?

and when did Yahoo decide that IE is good, where they not a Netscape company not that long ago?

but we all know that lynx is where it's at right.

Well, duh!

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.

Uhm, no, did you really expect to get an invitation to download IE7 if you were already running IE7?!

It seems to have stopped maybe

I just ran some searches and it's not doing it any more.

However, I did notice it doing that every time I accessed Yahoo using Firefox. I waited until I saw their actual advertisement version, clicked the "Ad Feedback" button, and told them what I thought about being asked to switch browsers.

I think it's a good thing to show the ad to IE 6- users on Windows, but it doesn't make sense anywhere else.

Yahoo! is useless

That is all.

Repositories

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

Hmm...

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

Copying

Sometimes copying on your competitors isn't the best idea.

Until MS makes it a necessary component, so what

IE6 for MS update only - Check
FF 2.0 - Check
Thunderbird - Check
Zone Alarm - Check
Avast AV - Check
Ad-Aware - Check
Spybot - Check
CCleaner - Check
Registry Mechanic - Check
ERUNT - Check
Winamp - Check

So given that I have XpHomeSP2 + current patches, MS Office 2003 + current patches & I use non MS for everthing else, then why am I worried? When MS makes it a hard requirement to run my current OS then I'll worry.

Easy solution (for Windows, anyway)

127.0.0.1 yahoo.com

I hate Yahoo. To me, they are evil... their software is crap, and breaks things... and they own Gator, er, Claria. Need I say more?
In my PC repair practice, I routinely remove all Yahoo applications from customers' computers, especially that f***ing toolbar. (Many support calls start out when a customer is inflicted with the Yahoo Toolbar, usually via Adobe, and something else stops working).
I do use Yahoo, however, when training other engineers to remove spyware. All I need to do to infest a machine is click on a few paid links in Yahoo search results. With their help, I can completely trash an XP machine in less than five minutes.

What a grand new feature

what's funny to me is that firefox users should be thinking, "why the hell would i download IE7 to get what firefox has had for some time." in firefox, however, i can just the search bar to multiple engines at the flick of a switch. this question sort of sums up the release of IE7. wow, in 4 years, microsoft put out a web browser that does almost as much as firefox was doing ages ago.

Who does this affect?

You mean people still use Yahoo for anything?!

Launchcast, after all the years, is still IE only

Thanks, Yahoo.

Holy Crap!!

Wait wait wait, according to Yahoo! I can search directly from my browser if I use IE7??? Oh man, I can't believe all this time I've wasted not being able to do that with Firefox!

Yahoo Mail also crashing FF

I find this very odd, especially because starting a few days ago my Yahoo Mail has suddenly started crashing Firefox. It happens every time I click on a message after using the browser's back button to back out of another message. Yeah, I'm using 1.508 but there's no reason it should suddenly stop being supported.

No invitation to download if you already have it

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.

Why would they bother to invite you to download IE7 when you are already running IE7?

Yet another reason not to use yahoo

I switched from the yahoo search engine to google a long time ago. Then I switched from yahoo finance message boards to investorvillage, after yahoo borked their message boards. Just today I found that yahoo borked their maps, which I used to use all the time. Now this.

Shocking behavior on the part of Microsoft

Golly, Microsoft wants all those users back who migrated to FireFox and are going about their usual methods to get them. I'm stunned.

Yahoo is in cahoots with Micro$oft

Yahoo Mail will not work properly with Firefox anymore as of version 1.5. I'm using 2.0 and when I click on the Delete button, nothing happens. JavaScript is enabled and I don't have this problem on other sites. It's a conspiracy.

Re:Yahoo?

What's a "Yahoo"?

Re:Yahoo?

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

VIDEO IS SPAM

So don't bother watching it like I did.

Re:Image search as well

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.

Re:moron

Nice epitaph you've picked for yourself

I see sarchasm

But of course as "genuine annoyance" gets worse more people will say "fuck this" and either not bother or use something better.
This means websites will continue to have to support the crap that is IE6 in addition to (the somewhat less crap that is) IE7 long into the future.

OTOH if M$ and Yahoo push hard enough everyone without XP or with a messed up GA will become a Firefox user.