Yahoo! Says! Chrome, IE Users! Should! 'Upgrade'! To! FIREFOX! Yahoo! has started urging visitors to its homepage to "upgrade to the new Firefox" – even when they aren't using the Mozilla browser in the first place. The message, along with a Firefox logo, has begun appearing for some users in the purple band along the top of Yahoo!'s portal pages. It's displayed when the visitor is using …
In switching the default search engine for Firefox to Yahoo, they also quite rudely changed my pre-existing Firefox installation away from using Google to using Yahoo. I could condone the default being set to Yahoo for new installs, but leave my browser alone when I already have it set to Google.
Not cool Mozilla, not cool!
I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu (14.04). I got the upgrade when it came out, but none of my settings, including search settings, were changed. If you're using Windows, then that might have something to do with it. All updates in Ubuntu are pushed out through its own update system rather than the sort of ad-hoc methods that applications on Windows use.
I'm in Canada, and the default search (and my chosen search) was changed to Yahoo! US only? I wish. Mozilla's firefox has pretty much exhibited malware-like behavior by surreptitiously altering my settings - I almost thought I was using IE again, and somehow had a BHO installed without my permission.
Firefox is the new IE? Hehehehe
There's nothing much wrong with IE nowadays. It does the job. Same as the others.
Actually the one I personally dislike is Chrome, because it won't let me have a traditional menu bar, so I have to click on the big button on the right, that then brings up the unwieldy menu of everything. But that's a relatively minor point. I still use Firefox because I got used to it, and haven't bothered to change.
IE users who aren't using Chrome/FF are unlikely to switch, so its really telling Chrome users to move to FF (and thus Bing).
With FF pushing Bing, and IE being more standards-based than it used to be, MS won't really care if you use FF as long as you use Bing.
Silly buggers have been pestering users to change browser ever since they introduced a new look a few years back that wasn't compatible with my then choice, Opera. Eventually, fed up with being nagged I switched but frankly I'd rather they'd stuck with Yahoo's classic look or put in the effort to match most popular browsers.
I've largely switched to Firefox after a flirtation with Chrome, so the new nagging doesn't bother me. But Yahoo's performance in the past few years has been pretty poor (not to mention the recent underseas outage) and I suspect that this latest move will push some users out the door.
I! changed! my! default! search! provider! back! to! Google!
Why?
Many MANY years ago I fired Yahoo, over almost non-existent security, irrelevant search results, and an email system that was brain-dead dumb at best. Since firing Yahoo! I have seen improved search results, don't regret Google's focus on security, and run my own email server which has never let me down even once.
Dear Yahoo!
You're fired again. I've changed 9 systems back to Google, and this count will only increase.
Sincerely,
A Yahoo! user never-again.
Like AOL and a bad fart - Yahoo keeps hanging around, stinking up the internet. The best thing you can do is leave the room, and hope it doesn't follow you.
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