IE7 vs. the Google and Yahoo Toolbars
I'm a Firefox guy (tabbed browsing: woo ha!) and MSFT didn't pick me for beta testing anyways so I don't have first hand experience on the IE 7 Google and Yahoo-gate thing, in which the Register's Andrew Orlowski claimed "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."

An update on the article says, "We've received multiple corroborations of the problem. For others, everything is fine."

Scoble went right to the source: "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."

And then Rubel chimes in with a post about how well Scoble handled MSFT's PR: "What's interesting here is that Scoble is the only one who's speaking for Microsoft on a media issue in order to prompt a retraction."

Though at the time of this post the Register hadn't really retracted anything: "One user who saw their toolbar vanish in IE7 was none other than Microsoft PR punchbag Robert Scoble. But he later denied having seen any problems, in a fascinating comment thread you can peruse here."
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |