Don’t Be Hypocritically Evil
There’s a lot of jokes flying around about the Google pot calling Microsoft’s kettle black. Some wonder why it is ok for Google to set defaults, whilst Microsoft can’t. Given the power Microsoft has on the desktop, and the companies’ less-than-stellar history when it comes to competitive practices, Google do have a point, but it makes for some amusing commentary nevertheless:
“If Google wants to fully live up to its ideals – to really give primacy to the goal of user choice in search – it should open up its home page to other search engines. That would be easy to do without mucking up the page or the “user experience.” You could just add a simple drop down menu that would allow users to choose whether to do a search with Google’s engine, or Microsoft’s, or Yahoo’s, or one of the other, less-well-known engines that now exist”.
IE developers responded to the NY Times story with the following post on their blog:
“The short version: the search box in IE7 is not Microsoft’s. It belongs to the user. Our guiding principle for the search box in IE7 is that the user is in control. ….The typical default when users install IE7 on their Windows XP machines will most likely be their usual search engine. Despite claims from some people around the web, MSN is not “The Default.â€
Never a dull moment in search.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:14 am
And even pc maker which install windows on pcs can change the default to some other search engine.
May 2nd, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Yes, Google do have a point. Unfortunatly, most reasoning vanishes when big money meets right doing, as Google very well know.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:47 pm
It’s mircosoft’s browser… let them do what they want. I say link it to MSN and not allow you to change it. If you want google turn it off and install the google toolbar.
What if I want the google toolbar but want to search MSN with it? Is google going to tell me how to do that?
June 11th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
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