Google Pushing Chrome to Internet Explorer Users
Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Internet | Posted on 17-04-2009
Just a few minutes ago I went to Google to search for something. I was using Internet Explorer at the moment because that’s all I had installed within the Virtual Machine I was working in. When I went to the site, something new and awkward hit me as I started typing in my search. Here’s what caught my attention.
I thought to myself, hmmm, this is kind of interesting. Then I thought, hmmm, I wonder if Firefox users get the same thing. Curious, I flipped over to Firefox on my machine and pulled up the page. Here’s the result.
Wow! Can you say target marketing? Is this war? Has Google opened a can of worms by doing this? This is pretty brazen if you ask me. Yep, Google has officially declared war on Internet Explorer it seems. And you know what? They’ll get away with it. Thoughts?
I love google chrome.Its faster than any other browser.Only thing is that is has a bug.It needs to be further modified.but thats the
essence of open source concept.we should all
help Google and support google.
Just noticed this myself. Was using Internet Explorer just to test out some pages – I actually use Chrome more often than not anyway.
Well, as it’s their page I’m sure they can do what they like and after my recent experience with IE8… good luck to them!
I noticed the same thing, but it appers to have been taken down now.
@Michael
Good detective work. Myth confirmed!
I’m seeing the toolbar ad in IE8 as well – nothing in FF3. I turned off any settings in FF3 to block ads and popups and still nothing. I clear cache/cookies/history/everything an reopened FF3 and still no ads.
I compared the view source of each browser to confirm they were different – the ad in IE8 is in the HTML and not JavaScript generated (rules out a bug in FF3 keeping the ad from showing).
For the final test I loaded up Fiddler and made some requests to google.com. With no user-agent, no ad. FF3 user-agent, no ad. With IE8 user-agent I get the ad. That confirms to me google is placing ads based on the user-agent string (nothing else was different between requests).
I’m not seeing it. But i did notice an ad for the google tool bar. Perhaps it’s just a genric advert on the page , and you happend to get chrome in IE, but the ad was blocked in FF?..just a thought.
@Michael
You don’t find the fact they didn’t advertise to Firefox users weird?
And why shouldn’t they – they’re promoting their product on their website. 🙂