Boycott Microsoft, now.
Long-time readers of this blog know I have no love for Microsoft. For those of you who need proof, Exhibit A would be this post. Exhibit B, this one.
I run an Ubuntu Linux system and browse with Firefox. When I run searches, it’s through Google or Wikipedia. The likelihood of my wanting to use Microsoft Live Search, MSN, Hotmail, or any other online product Microsoft touts is up there with the chances of a snowflake in hell. So you can imagine my reaction when browsing along the Intarwebs, I click on a link to a web page, and get this:
No, the link itself doesn’t point to Live Search. Not at all. No, I don’t use Live Search, nor do I want to. This is happening while browsing a site I’ve seen before, to a page I know exists. But somehow, stuff gets redirected to Live Search anyway. Worse, this redirection happens even while editing blog posts–WordPress dialog boxes get completely derailed in order to show me Live Search results for the word “customjuju”. Um, yeah, that should make me think your search engine is indispensable. And the best part is, after Live Search takes over a page link this way, that’s where the link always goes–unless I kill my Internet connection and reload. Why? Because Microsoft Live helpfully plants a bunch of cookies to make sure their site loads again and again and again until I use their search engine.
Now, y’all know that ain’t right. When other people who aren’t Microsoft do this, it’s called hijacking. I mean, people pay me to fix their computers when something like this happens. This is obviously some kind of click-piracy to “prove” many people are using Live Search, by showing how many people load the site. In some cloud-cuckoo-land the Microsoft execs inhabit, this kind of server request sleight-of-hand is supposed to prove they’re better than Google, or Yahoo!, or whatever, rather than showing they can’t get market share without sleaze-baggery.
No. I refuse to go along with it.
But you don’t have to take just my word for it. Webmasters have been having problems for a while with server logs spammed with live.com results that um….didn’t really happen.
So I think it’s time to show Microsoft where the money really is–in other products made by companies with a better ethics system.
Who’s with me?
Editrix’ Note: If, like me, you don’t want Firefox/Linux spouting Live Search when you’re trying to read a cool cartoon like Girls With Slingshots or Day by Day, do this:
In Firefox, go to the “Edit” Menu and click “Preferences”.
Choose the “Privacy” Tab.
In the “Cookies” section, click the “Exceptions” button.
Block the following sites:
- live.com
- search.live.com
- msn.com
- search.msn.com
Next, close the “Exceptions” box, and click the “Show Cookies” button.
In the “Cookies” window, search for any cookie names with variations of live.com and msn.com, and delete them.
Close the “Cookies” window.
Close the “Preferences” window.
Restart Firefox.
Thank you for this post. My husband has finally got Ubuntu working on his laptop after wresting with Vista for a year. The level of profanity has been reduced exponentially.
It was a steep learning curve to get it to work, but now that he has, he loves it. I’m going to pass this info along to him.
Comment by Katherine | June 27, 2008