February 23, 2010

Microsoft’s Browser Selection + User Ignorance Lets Google’s Chrome “cheat”?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Michael B. from the Mozilla Marketing list recently posted an hypothesis on why Google Chrome may suddenly start taking a much larger chunk out of the browser market now that Microsoft’s browser selection screens are appearing in the EU.

I’ve a hypothesis to explain Chrome’s recent and sudden surge of usage share the last couple months. Let me first say that almost every time I ever ask what web browser someone uses, the answer I get is Google. After I explain that Google is a search engine, not a web browser they usually tell me that they have no idea. I later find out that they are either using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Enter Microsoft’s new browser ballot into the equation. Instead of just saying “Chrome,” Google’s web browser says “Google” and then says “chrome” in smaller letter. People are asked what web browser they want so they think, I want to search with Google of course so they choose Chrome. If this is the case, it might be a problem that should be addressed.

Perhaps user ignorance on what a browser actually is will give Google a major boost.  Because, admittedly, even my own father reference to Internet Explorer as “my internet”.

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November 18, 2009

Microsoft may have crippled up to a million of their Xbox 360 consoles

Xbox
Image via Wikipedia

A recent PCworld story, suggests in a measure to prevent hardware modding (which does have fair use purposes as well, such as making backups of content) they have banned up to a million Xbox 360 consoles from the Xbox LIVE service, and may have rendered the machines mainly unusable.

DailyTech’s sources claim the ban blocks game installations to the hard drive and the Windows Media Player extender, corrupts save games and Gamertags, and disallows the console from accessing Xbox LIVE.

If this is in fact true; and does render installations mainly useless; it may result in ~$200,000,000 of consoles (at new market value) no longer being usable and requiring their owners to purchase new consoles from Microsoft if they want to keep gaming on the 360 platform. Sounds like Microsoft may be stuffing their Christmas stockings a little earlier in the name of fair play.

[Kudo's to a friend of mine for nudging me on this, thanks Dylan!]

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