Google’s 'Explorer Destroyer'

Google’s 'Explorer Destroyer' movement aims IE

Google has lunched Explorer Destroyer campaign. Here in this blog I have quoted the various texts from different sources that says some thing very much interesting .

What is It?

According to the Explorer Destroyer Web site, the group offers Web-site owners scripting technology that detects whether a visitor is running IE. If so, an alert will appear advising the visitor to download Firefox so they can either view the site better or view it at all. Whenever a visitor to a Web site using the group's technology switches to Firefox from IE, the owner of the Web site will get the referral fee if they have signed up for.

How it works?

According to the Explorer Destroyer Web site, the group offers Web-site owners scripting technology that detects whether a visitor is running IE. If so, an alert will appear advising the visitor to download Firefox so they can either view the site better or view it at all. Whenever a visitor to a Web site using the group's technology switches to Firefox from IE, the owner of the Web site will get the referral fee if they have signed up for Google's AdSense program.

There are three types of alerts site owners can put on their page--"gentle encouragement," "semi-serious," or "dead serious."

If a Web site owner chooses "gentle encouragement," site visitors who are using IE will see a banner across the top of the page that encourages them to download Firefox. A "semi-serious" site will put up a splash page encouraging a user to download Firefox, with a link for downloading Mozilla's browser as well as a link to the Web site.

Those who choose the "dead serious" alert actually block users with IE from viewing the page, informing them they must install Firefox to view the site. View a demo of what happens when a user clicks on a site with this rating.

Reactions

"Everyone likes a good horse race--even when the race is fixed. That's about how I see the supposed race between Internet Explorer and Firefox. Ever since IE was included with Microsoft's operating system, its dominance has pretty much been a done deal. But that doesn't mean the front-runner should sit back and rest on its laurels. And up until now, that's what Microsoft has been doing."

"Just as IBM finally got that suits and white shirts and shiny shoes don't project a friendly image at trade shows, Microsoft seems to have finally understood that just shipping a browser along with its OS isn't going to guarantee that people will use it. So as Ed Bott reveals in "IE7 For XP Beta 2: Has Firefox Met Its Match?" Redmond has added a few interesting features to its venerable browser, such as tabbing and some additional security protection. (Which it needs--IE is still the number-one target of malware writers.)"

"I think IE 7 brings the browser to parity with Firefox in terms of features, and the security is a big improvement over IE 6," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft "I think it will be good enough to stop some of IE's market share loss to Firefox."

However, Microsoft's history is replete with examples of the company using its financial and distribution muscle to overpower smaller competitors. It used such tactics with devastating effect in the first round of the browser wars in the 1990's, when it challenged the once dominant Netscape browser and eventually drove it out of business.

Information Week ran a comprehensive test of both browsers and concluded that Firefox was still slightly ahead especially for technology savvy users like programmer Mitchell Adams.