Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

The Reg Sez:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 went on a limited beta release today and contains a nasty surprise for some users.

Users with search toolbars from Yahoo! and arch-rival Google have discovered that these vanish. Other third-party toolbars designed to block pop-ups or aid with form filling appear to be working normally, according to reports from Reg readers.

The default search engine is MSN Search.

There are sound compatibility reasons for Microsoft disabling third-party toolbars in an early cut of the software. The beta is only available to Vista beta testers, and is available either as part of Vista itself or as a download for Windows XP, and affects only a few thousand people.

But it does raise ominous echoes of Microsoft's previous tactics of foreclosing competition by hiding the alternatives available to users. For anti-competive reasons, Microsoft is unlikely to risk such a move in the finished product. We'll have to see.

Link

Meh, par for the course. I remember that when it was IE4 vs NC4, if I tried to download NC4 from ftp.netscape.com with IE, I had to try 3 times, every time, before the FTP connection would run without breaking. Never had that problem with any other FTP server in IE, and it worked fine if you used ftp.exe. I can't prove it, but I swear Microsoft did that on purpose.

The bounceback on this reg story, however is pretty heavy...

IE 7 won't block Google or Yahoo toolbars, head of IE team says

There's a report, on the Register, that IE 7 doesn't work with the Google or Yahoo toolbars. I just talked with Dean Hachamovitch, the guy who runs the IE team, and he says that they tested with the Google and Yahoo toolbar and it was running on their machines (he just sent me screen captures of his personal machine running IE 7 with both the Google and Yahoo toolbar installed) and they in no way are trying to block the Google toolbar from working. He says that he commits to everyone to getting the toolbar to work and if there's something that isn't working the IE team wants to know about it so they can fix it.

This link, on Molly Holzschlag's blog (she's on the Web Standards Project) seems appropriate at this time: That's why it's called beta.

Dean also tells me that we have engineers working with Google to make sure that Google's stuff will work fine in IE 7 and Windows Vista.

It's interesting that many bloggers (both pro and amateur) have been giving me crud the past week or two for "being fast to publish" and "not calling sources to check on my reporting" but that the Register, a professional journalism outlet (they get paid for journalism, I do not) apparently didn't call our development teams to check into this report and get their side of the story. I wonder if Andrew Orlowski will link to my blog and correct his story because his report is HUGELY damaging here.

Scoble

And

How do you turn a bug in a limited-circulation beta used by just a few thousand people into a full-blown PR crisis that entertains millions?

Simple. You just hand a keyboard to Robert Scoble.

The news that some users noticed their Google and Yahoo! toolbars vanish in IE7 soon reached the "celebrity blogger" in Microsoft's marketing department yesterday - and he flew into action. He began to paint a picture that grew more confusing and contradictory as the day turned to night.

At first Scoble confirmed there were problems with "older versions of Yahoo". "Yahoo's version 5.6 had an issue but the current version (6.1.1) is working fine," he wrote on his weblog.

But he soon contradicted that in comments later in the evening.

"We have not seen any problems yet. But we're only a few testers working afterhours here," he wrote at 10:24PM yesterday in between repeated attacks on the integrity of the media.

He was on a roll.

This morning he was even more emphatic.

"We have not seen any issues with the latest Google or Yahoo toolbar on IE 7 beta 1. Can I say that clearly enough?" he wrote [7/29/05; 1:24:07 PM] in the comments section of his blog.

And on his weblog frontpage, Scoble wrote:

"I never saw the problem that Andrew said I had. I don't have any problems with either Yahoo or Google's toolbars on my machines. Your mileage may vary. I have no idea what Andrew's talking about."

Perhaps we can jog his memory.

A reader has stepped forward to volunteer this email. We've removed his name. It was sent yesterday evening Pacific Time, and this morning our source gave us permission to use it.

Subject: RE: IE7 nukes Google, Yahoo! search

Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:31:42 -0700

From: "Robert Scoble"

To: [zapped]

Yup, trying to find out what's up on that one. It did it for me too. Wiped them out.

Robert

Oops.

The Reg again...