I've installed IE7 beta2 (v7.0.5299.0) yesterday, for testing purposes. Of course I was curious how do my sites work with it, so I checked immediately. Well, they were looking fine (maybe fonts are antyaliased a bit too much), apart from one tiny detail - my Adsense ads were not visible (and I haven't messed with settings). Is it just me ? I've imagined sad and disappointed faces of my users (the ones equipped with brand new and shiny IE7) robbed of their favourite ads (and me, robbed of my revenue ) - well, I didn't like that vision at all. As for me it certainly casts some new light on Google promoting Firefox.
By the time there are final release version of IE 7.0, Google will have a exclusively code that will make the ads appear in the browser like Firefox now, so don't worry about that.
and such a move would be very risky as thats like a declaration of war! and google "could" indeed prepare for such a war!
Google just needs to include browser detection their Adsense code and if it sees IE it can just open up FireFox and uninstall IE altogether. Google's motto: Don't be evil. MS's motto: Be only as evil as necessary.
Personally I think such filter (if filter it is; as we should remember that it's still BETA, so the issue may be as well caused by some bug) should be quite easy to be fooled by Google. Nothing to be worried about now. However the whole idea and the direction Microsoft may have chosen to follow is IMHO dangerous.
I would be a betting man I thank google would come out with its own browser or start promoting the FireFox on its home page a lot more. They are pushing it in there pack http://pack.google.com/
You know generally I subscribe to the "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" theory, but Microsoft has done stuff like this before. They have no concept of "fair play" and go out of their way to play dirty. But it could be my other Microsoft theory: all their original good programmers got filthy rich from stock options and are long gone, leaving them with a large stable of inexperienced new hires who screw up right and left. It is still beta, so no point in worrying about it.
If this actually makes it to the final release, I think the backlash from publishers will be significant. I would put a firefox banner on every single page I own, even if they didn't pay a referral. Webmasters could even put something like this on their sites: Are you using Internet Explorer? If so, this page may not display correctly. We recommend downloading Mozilla Firefox.
Instead: Are you using Internet Explorer? Gosh do you live in the past? Go and get your free super amazing Firefox... for FREE Let's imagine what would work better
Not to press the conspiracy theory too far, but hasn't MSN been running/testing their own ads network recently too? It would make business sense, while holding the majority percentage in browser of use to *snuff* competitor's ads (strictly in the interest of ad-blocking of-course) while allowing your own to display. I'm not saying this is what's going on at all, but it's not that far fetched to imagine as a business owner. Pop-up and other ad blocking technologies have already escaped prosecutions as courts tend to view the end user's PC and monitor as actually belonging to the end user, saying it's okay for you to decide what will and will not be displayed as you surf. I could see it being argued that adding these additional ad blocking capabilities to browser software is simply just a way to offer end users more options and control. The business ethics of such a move would be a separate argument to make.
nice. but i expect by the time IE7 is released to the public, they would have made adjustments to accomodate adsense ads. unless, of course, they want to pick a fight with google.
haha, this is really interesting, seems that competition between the two giants are becoming more and more fierce now...
Although there will be a fix for this... i don't think that Microsofts intentions were to SCREW google but likely to make web users experience better much like popup blockers have.