Microsoft's new search (decision) engine Bing, came live last Monday and is now having a 6% share of the search market. Many already tried the new search engine but few are not enthusiastic. There are few claiming that there browsers search address bar were hijacked by Bing and can't change it back to their preferences. The problem however is only found on IE6 (Internet explorer version 6) users. They claim that search on the browser is automatically directed to Bing instead of their set preferences. Many were outrageous that Microsoft intentionally place the bug to boost Bing's popularity. Microsoft however have published a statement that it is indeed a bug on IE6 and the it has already been fixed. They apologized for the trouble but stressed out to users of IE6 to upgrade to the latest version which is the IE8.
Internet Explorer version 6 is an old browser, over 8 years since its release. It was released in 2001 just before the release of Windows XP. But even with its age, it still has a considerable amount of users. Statcounter claimed that IE6 is accounted for 21.6% of users in the last month. With this, Microsoft is urging the upgrade to the newer version to avoid inconveniences like the Bing bug.
For those looking for a fix please see this post.
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2 comments:
My wife seems to have gotten this too (I had to remove it twice) and she was running IE 7. I thought she was running IE 8 so I am upgrading her immediately. She had several home pages set up too, and they got wiped out.
I can't believe Microsoft would do something so sleazy. Seems like something Yahoo would do. I guess they're desperate to boost their search engine share by all means possible. I'm not a Microsoft basher by any means, but a line has been crossed here.
Do you happen to have a link to where Microsoft admitted the "bug"?
Many also shared the same thought and I also believe that this bug is intended not just to boost bing popularity but also to promote their IE8. It was reported that the company admitted this and was was fixed in a update. See this post in Computerworld - http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9133932
Some IE8 users even reported the same problem. There are also other good browsers that you can try. I personally use Mozilla firefox. You can also try Google Chrome. I consider this browsers way better than IE.
I guess Microsoft is desperate nowadays. With an antitrust suite in EU, Microsoft will strip IE out of Windows 7 release. To make up with the loss, they are doing everything to promote IE. They even have a charity for it. See this post - http://youritsource.blogspot.com/2009/06/microsoft-uses-charity-to-boost-ie.html
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