Most web developers agree that Firefox is a superior browser to Internet Explorer, but how do we get non-technical users to give it a try? Well… what if Google told them to?
Starting today, Internet Explorer users based in the United States who visit google.com will be greeted by the very first ad for a 3rd party product to appear on the page:
“Firefox with Google Toolbar: tabbed browsing, safer surfing” reads the ad. Granted, Google has a vested interest in promoting its toolbar, but the fact that it chose to do so with the Firefox browser (rather than continuing to push the IE version) is a huge coup.
April 26th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Fantastic news!!!
If Google can get more people to convert to a modern browser, my work will become so much easier.
April 26th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
unless your a tech support for an isp, erm, afraid not, but if your a web designer more of your users would see it the same way as you. Test on IE 5 no matter what! there are still people on win 98 who have no idea about upgrading.
Less of the “it works fine on mine” attitude please (just stiring, heh heh).
but yes it is fantastic news! less people with spyware on their macines is good for everybody.
April 26th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Now if only they made the Google toolbar for Firefox as good as the IE one!
April 26th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
That’s really interesting - I actually saw this in my Internet Explorer Beta of IE7 about a month ago. I thought all IE users saw it.
April 26th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Amen.
April 26th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
This is pretty awesome. I am also glad they are not feeding me that crap in Opera. However, maybe this will win a few more IE converts to a real browser.
April 26th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Hoooray for google :)
April 26th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Firefox is gaining popularity, but this has nothing to do with making anything easier, you still have to design for two main browsers.
This “browser/search” competition will probably lead to Microsoft doing something “anti-Google” in their next browser or os update.
April 27th, 2006 at 2:22 am
[…] Click on the image for the full view.. (Credit!) […]
April 27th, 2006 at 6:02 am
already happens, just hasn’t been anti-google, right now it’s just all the MSN products are everywhere on your machine and after every SP update it all gets put back to the way it was before.
I’m glad google is doing this. And google isn’t really being anti-MS about it.
April 27th, 2006 at 9:44 am
[…] По материалам SitePoint Blogs. Скриншот в полный размер. 27.4.2006 Дмитрий Барановский @ 03:44 | категория Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox | […]
April 27th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
What saddens me is that there are still somethings I have to use IE to perform. Some sites with JavaScript don’t work in Firefox. I click on the JavaScript links and nothing happens until I open the same site in Internet Explorer. Also, my Linksys Router has a browser interface for its configuration that will not load in Firefox.
Firefox is an awesome browser, and I’m happy I made the switch so long ago. Having to use IE to view certain web sites just reminds me of how inferior it is in comparison.
April 27th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
get ie tab, it allows u to open tabs embedded in ie instead of firefox
April 27th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
[…] Obviously they are pushing it because of their toolbar as well, but this is an interesting move. Full story at Sitepoint. Thanks Tim. Send this post to a friend […]
April 28th, 2006 at 5:51 am
I love this. There are still far too many users who don’t know that Firefox is the far superior browser.
April 28th, 2006 at 8:36 am
I love it how Google put that “Make Google your search engine in Internet Explorer” when a) I have the Google toolbar and b) Google is set to my default search engine with the built in search in IE7. Makes me wonder how they managed to stuff that up.
April 28th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
This is totally awesome news. Wasy to go google.
April 28th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
This is cool, I’m glad Firefox is getting more recognition for “average” web users.
I think one of the reasons that Firefox hasn’t caught on is that for most web users, like my Mom, things like better CSS support and browser extensions don’t mean anything. Hopefully thing like this will encourage some browser diversity.
April 29th, 2006 at 5:08 am
How is it inferior when people for IE and not all major browsers? If people design properly then there’s no good reason for it not to work in browsers other than IE… which is in no way superior.
April 29th, 2006 at 5:08 am
oh yes and GREAT news, it wont make my job easier but the more people using a proper modern browser, be it Opera, Safari or Firefox etc…the better!
April 29th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Great…. Not only does Google have way too much control over information, but now they’re trying to control what browser people use? Why not just automatically download a Google browser, a Google operating system, and a Google office suite onto anyone computer accessing google.com? Oh, and fry any non-Google processor and destroy any non-Google monitor while it’s at it. If Microsoft was doing half the things Google has, there’d be a public uproar and a mob marching on Redmond. But because it’s Google, not Microsoft, it’s really cool.
April 29th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Great news. by the way any how we should switch to non-microsoft browser because
.
April 30th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Google goes crazy and puts banner on homepage
I usually use firefox now, but I just used IE for something and noticed this:
It reads: “Firefox with Google Toolbar: tabbed browsing, safer surfing.” and has spreadfirefox.com in the url. This doesn’t really show much about the ta…
April 30th, 2006 at 10:52 am
[…] Of course they already have used graphic ads on their pages before, but they were less banner like. Danny Sullivan pointed this out late December 2005. It looks to me like this latest add is the most banner like so far - and is relatively new. Based on other posts I am guessing this happened a few days ago on 4/26. According to these reports the reason for the ad is to “help provide our users with a great search experience”. […]
May 5th, 2006 at 3:02 am
Eh well, any move away from an unsafe browser, is a good move.
May 14th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Firefox is only safer because less people use it so less people try to exploit it. As soon as its popularity increases and a larger percentage of people are using it, the attacks will start coming at Firefox users as much as they have been at IE users for so long.
May 14th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Were that true, Apache web servers (which make up over 70% of servers as of November 2005) would suffer from a much greater number of successful attacks as compared to Microsoft IIS servers. But according to many independent studies Apache has by far the better track record for security.
Note especially point two of that essay: “Windows sites are disproportionately defaced more often than explained by its market share.” Why? Because the source code of open source software is available for public scrutiny and review. In the absence of security by obscurity, open source software must be secure by design.