Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Browser campaign slams IE

There is a great campaign being run over at Browse Happy that is pushing people to try alternatives to Internet Explorer. I learned of this site through a News.com article that is linked below... but one of the quotes stood out so much I had to call it out here:

"'We believe that customers will choose the browser that best meets their needs,' a Microsoft representative said. 'We believe that most will continue to choose IE when they evaluate all of the factors: end-user functionality, site and application compatibility, developer extensibility, enterprise manageability, and security backed by the processes and engineering discipline employed by Microsoft.'"

This is a joke right? Since Netscape died how many people really have taken the time "evaluate" alternative browsers? How many people even know there are alternative browsers out there? What percentage of those people are probably scared to try something new in fear that it won't work the way they need it?

This campaign will help to remedy some of those issues. But one of the issues I would like to see fixed is that I have to have internet explorer installed if I want to go to the Windows Update site. The site doesn't support FireFox... How is this not a blatant abuse of their Windows monopoly? Microsoft is forcing me to keep IE on my computer if I want to browse over to the Windows Update site. Shame on them.

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